“What is that?” she asked, not expecting him to answer, but finding it necessary to voice it anyway.
“That,” Cydrin responded, a hint of derision in his tone. “Is their great achievement.” He turned to her, his eyes over-bright. Accusing. “Did they not herald their great success before all of their employees? Was it not celebrated as the next step in reproduction?”
Clairy swallowed. Maybe it was. But not with her. She welcomed mothers, many swollen with pregnancy as their time to deliver grew nearer. She had seen their faces, often tired and worn, but an underlying joy ever present—that a babe long yearned for, was soon to be born.
She made herself look back at the screen, to see what he was telling her, to absorb the truth she had long denied. “So this is where you came from? And... and others like you?”
No parents to welcome them. None to teach and guide other than the doctors who had the audacity to manipulate them into being in the first place.
“We did not emerge as babies, if that is why your lip is wobbling.” Was it? She hadn’t noticed. “There is no need for such sympathy.”
She glanced back at Cydrin. “Isn’t there?” She couldn’t imagine the technology possible to skip over such stages of growth, for fully formed men to emerge from the tanks rather than the little being floating in the artificial fluid. “So much has been robbed from you. From all of you.”
For the first time, it was Cydrin that looked away first.
He seemed ready to say something, perhaps admit some depth of feeling for the injustice done to him, but she supposed he was one for action rather than words. He clearly knew of the wrongness, knew that he should have been a great deal more than he was, and the only way he knew to stop it, to ensure that it could be stopped, was to obliterate it.
And he had.
And doubtlessly innocents had been taken along with it.
Another horror, another niggling worry to add to her mounting list of troubles about that day. “Were more of you being grown? Did... did they die too?”
Cydrin looked back at her, forcing his steady reserve that usually came so naturally. Or unnaturally, depending on one’s point of view. “Most would not be cognisant at that stage,” he informed her, and that was not enough to stop the shiver of dismay for it to be confirmed. “And they were spared a great deal. Had they emerged, they would have been forced to endure the same as the rest of us. Death was a mercy.”
She shook her head, not simply from disagreement, but to try to force her own thoughts to settle, to reconcile his cool and practical assessment of what was best for an entire outcropping of unborn.
His own kind.
He leaned forward suddenly, perhaps growing suspicious when she could not look at him any longer. “Does this disturb you further?” he asked, not quite the same as his earlier accusation, but similar. “That I was willing to end the lives of my own people as well as your own?”
She did look then, her voice strong even if there was a hint of tears about the edges. “Please do not ask me questions like that.”
Cydrin blinked once. “Like what?”
Clairy took a shuddering breath. “Like this is all a test. That you like to shock me with knowledge and then mock me for feeling something about it.”
Cydrin leaned back, something in him still wrong, but she could not place it. “But I like to see how you feel,” he reminded her, and that only made it worse.
“I am not something to be studied,” she retorted, ready to put this conversation to an end. She had meant it, she was ready to listen to him, to his story, but now...
She was tired, perhaps not physically, though their excursion had her muscles protesting much more than seemed reasonable. Perhaps it was a consequence of the unfamiliar atmosphere he had mentioned. Perhaps it was all an excuse to retreat downstairs under the pretence of weariness.
But before she could move, he had begun the vid again, and half-heartedly she turned her head so she could see what fresh horror he could find in what once had seemed so glamorous.
It was innocuous enough, at least on the surface. A promise of a consultation, regardless of status or circumstance. No word on how poorer families could ever afford to book transport to the facility. She had only managed because they were willing to shuttle new employees, assuming she was willing to forfeit the expenditures from her first pay.
It had seemed a welcome trade.
She thought of it quite differently now.
“Here in our facilities, located for your convenience throughout the quadrant, we can offer you what nature has denied. The wholeness that can only come through family.” The serene smile was back, this time with a forced cheer that did not quite befit her image. “Visit us soon. Your future is waiting, and so are we.”
Except they weren’t. Their largest facility was already gone.
Clairy had seen her future with them. An answer to her problems. Her family’s. She had seen a different life, one that included helping people, not merely toiling in the hot sun for the rest of her days.
And it had been. For a while.
And now she sat with her stomach a lump of sickly twists, her hands twisting into the fabric at her sleeves, too anxious to keep still.
And a man that watched her too closely, hanging on her every emotion as if he could somehow absorb them into his own being.
The thought disturbed her because it seemed too close to the truth. He tried to mimic her postures and behaviours, why shouldn’t he try to steal her feelings as well?
Another wave of sick, and this time she did get up and go to the lav, more for the privacy than to see to any other need.
She ran the taps, allowing cool water to run over her trembling hands, smoothing it over her face and neck as she fought for calm, tampered down terrors that were only partly hers.
She had thought that by the end of it, she would feel more compassion for Cydrin. But at the moment there was only a fresh outpouring of fear. If he was willing to sacrifice his own kind in the effort to be rid of his enemies, how long before she would be seen as a liability as well? It was only reasonable to be rid of such an inconvenience.
He had only promised to tell her first when her usefulness was at an end. However small and negligible that use had been.
She allowed herself to cry, if only for a short while. A sudden burst of release before those tears were washed away as well. Forgotten. He hadn’t killed her yet, and she was not going to mourn prematurely.
She doubted when the end did come that she would be given time to do so at all.
And it was better that way. To be like everybody else and not know the time or the date, even if she was fairly certain of the means.
“Clairy,” a voice called, and she shut her eyes, wondering if he could absorb the concept of solitude in the washroom.
Though she had been gone quite a long time.
“Yes?” she answered, her throat tight and uncooperative in saying anything at all.
“I am...” he began, trailing off just as quickly. She waited, unwilling to come out without some indication of his mood and what their next interlude might contain.
If he could use silence, then so could she.
Her waiting proved useful, for with enough of it, he started again. “This did not go as I intended,” he admitted at last.
She brushed at her eyes one last time before she raised a reluctant hand and allowed the door to open.
“Maybe so, but I’m sorry too. I... I promised to listen and instead I got distracted with my own thoughts.” They might be reasonable, or maybe they weren’t, but they also were not terribly helpful at the present moment. Her aim was to know Cydrin better and the more she did, the better she would be able to navigate the tangle of a situation he had brought her into.
And she could not allow herself to be derailed by fear. Justified or not.
Cydrin gave her an odd look, as if he confused why she was apologising, or perhaps for referencing thoughts that she had not shared
with him. He would be waiting a very long time, because she was not about to bring up her concern that he would end her at his earliest convenience. She would not put such an idea in his head if it was not already there.
“I do not want you to be uncomfortable here.” He delved into his pocket and pulled out the device that held their new acquisitions. “In your quarters or in conversation with me.”
She nodded, broaching the subject she had so curtly attempted before. “Then maybe... maybe you could try to hide it better when you’re analysing my reactions?”
Cydrin managed to look abashed, though it was a forced, practiced measure that almost made her laugh. “I will strive to do better on that front,” he assured her.
She smiled, a thin, weary thing, but genuine. “Then I think we can be friends again.”
He blinked, as he often did when she said something that surprised him. “I did not realise that you considered me a friend.”
She didn’t. Not how she would have usually referred to one, at least. But most of those relationships had been forged in childhood, history and proximity creating bonds and affections that would not be easily sundered.
If the authorities came now and took Cydrin away, possibly executed him for his crimes, would she be sorry?
She would be glad to return to her family, of that she knew most certainly. But there was a part of her, no matter how small, that would be sorry for him. Sorry that his freedom was short, that his attempt to learn how to be a better man was not to continue.
She didn’t know if she should feel guilty for feeling that way, especially since she had so recently shed tears in her uncertainty for her own future, but she was past caring. She would allow others to judge as they liked if ever she was given opportunity to share her life with another again.
But for now, there was him.
And she could not bear the thought of the constant terror, the doubts, the indecision regarding his nature.
Better to listen to him, to know him.
To call him friend.
And see what that got her.
“I’d like to think we could be,” she hedged, glancing at him thoughtfully. “Did you not want me for a friend? After all, I did work for your enemies.” Perhaps it was a stupid thing to bring up, for he never seemed to forget where he’d found her, but it seemed a fair enough reason that he should want to keep her at a distance.
He was quiet for a moment, and she assumed he was considering the prospect. But instead of giving an affirmation or denial, he instead had that same look of vulnerability, just around the edges, absent unless she knew where to search for it. “I have never had a friend before. From what I know of the title, I do not believe I would make a very good one.”
That was probably true, at least in the strictest sense. Friends were not kidnappers, unless it was a teasing prank as Yoshin and Renmark had done to her brother a fortnight ago, claiming it was a precursor to his initiation into being a husband.
But friends did go to markets together. They thought of how to decorate a home, perhaps even generously contributing with special items that the other could not afford.
She nibbled at her lip before allowing herself to point at the object still in his hand. “I think you want to be,” she soothed. “I think... I think I believe you when you say that you want me to be comfortable. That you don’t want me to be a prisoner here. And I would rather have you for a friend than a captor.” She was partly teasing, but mostly serious.
And Cydrin seemed to know that.
“I will learn,” he promised, as gravely as he had vowed not to hurt her without first informing her. “I will learn how to be better. For you.” He took a breath, as close to a huff as she had ever heard from him. “I do not wish to be what they wanted.”
Clairy hesitated but eventually moved forward. She knew what she would do for someone else, how she would comfort, but with him, she hesitated. It felt wrong to touch, but she did. Because she was going to try.
Until he showed her that it was a mistake to do so.
It was just a hand on his arm, a simple gesture that she would have given even to a stranger, yet with him it was enough for her heart to race. “What did they want? What did they want with all of you?”
She felt him stiffen, a subtle tension of his musculature that she would not have noticed except for the light touch of her hand upon him. “Assassins. Killers,” he answered, his voice cold, an answer she did not expect. “You are surprised.”
She nodded, a faltering jerk of motion.
Cydrin eyed her carefully, but continued in his explanation. “There is a great deal of money to be had from the enterprise. Not all missions were covert. Some were trained to be soldiers. Specialised forces that would obey every order without question. No division of loyalty. No family to consider, only the will to please the masters.”
She shivered, her hand falling away. The sick feeling was back, roiling uncomfortably in her belly. Not for herself, this time, but for him.
“And... if you refused...”
Could they refuse? He’d mentioned manipulation of the genes, but she was not versed enough to know how much the body controlled the mind. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, if such knowledge meant it could be used so brutally.
“Few attempted,” he answered. “Those that did were culled. I have only met one firstborn, and that was to bring him to his own execution.”
A lump settled in her throat. They were generations of them.
And she had sat in the lobby and smiled and greeted, while there were so many suffering in the hidden places she had not even thought about.
“I am sorry,” she whimpered, meaning it more than she had before. “I’m sorry for who they were and what they did. I’m sorry that I...” she took a breath, trying not to release the sob that threatened to emerge regardless. “I’m sorry that I was a part of it at all.”
If she was waiting for absolution, she knew she would be standing there a very long time. He was not interested in telling her that it had been all right to take the job, that her reasons justified her participation.
He didn’t know those reasons, not fully, didn’t know how desperate she had been and what a blessing it had seemed at the time.
And even now, she floated through space with him, negligent of the responsibilities at home that burdened her even now.
But he would know nothing of familial ties. So she said nothing, and allowed him to stand there, thinking the worst of her for something she could not take back.
Because, in the end, if she was faced with that choice again...
She was not sure that she would have chosen differently, not given the options open to her.
And that troubled her most of all.
11
“I’m just not sure...” Clairy mused, turning the rug in another direction. The direction it had begun in, though the way she acted suggested that her memory was wiped between each attempt.
“Perhaps you are merely dissatisfied with the selection itself,” he offered, his own quarters already properly outfitted with his new accoutrement. It was... strange, looking in and seeing such finery. A part of him insisted it was all unnecessary, merely more to clean and tend to, useless frippery that lacked any true purpose.
But another, deeper part, was gratified. It looked like a proper room, ones he had seen in vids and through his missions, where a regular man might dwell.
And that is what he wanted to be, wasn’t it?
Clairy was much more deliberate with the placement of each piece, fussing with the bed linens until they were folded just so, pillows beaten and fluffed with practiced hands, as if she could not quite believe that they emerged in quite the same condition as they had gone in.
She fluffed them again.
It was a complete waste of his time to stand there watching, and yet he could not seem to bid his feet to move him back upstairs.
“No,” she disagreed. “It’s a lovely piece. But if it’s this way,” she sh
ifted it again. “You see more of the greens.” He supposed that was true. “But the other way, more of the yellows and pinks come out. So which do you like better?”
He looked at her incredulously, unable to even comprehend how such a thing might matter. It was a rug, its purpose to be walked on. Colours were merely an attribute, not something to be considered based on preference.
Clairy huffed, muttering something low to herself that sounded a great deal like, “A lot of help you are.”
It was a strange thing, to consider his opinion on the subject. Truthfully, he was not certain he could conjure one as it still seemed wholly absurd, but the more she fiddled, the more he seemed to have at least some inkling that one direction appeared marginally superior to the other. “That way,” he told her, wondering if she had dizzied herself with her turning about. “The weaver would have intended the additional colours to be noticed or they would not have embellished it at all.” Or so he assumed. Though it seemed a reasonable assumption.
Clairy nodded, stepping away to look at her new quarters. Things had been tense between them since their conversation about the Project, and even an offer of more food had done little to loosen her tongue and set her more at ease.
It was only when he produced their wares and allowed her to fuss in her quarters that she seemed more herself, and he was strangely relieved to find her so.
She had claimed to want a friendship with him, and already he wanted the hour to grow late and her natural rhythms to insist that she sleep, so he could be free to pour over the subject in more detail.
He had been doing that with great frequency since she joined him on his vessel. Certain mannerisms that he did not understand, he would research and attempt to emulate. The shrugging of her shoulders was a particularly new phenomena, one that seemed a strain on the spine when a simple, “I do not know,” would suffice. But he would attempt it should it suit a situation properly.
He had looked up a great deal on families since they dominated most of her conversation. Marital rites were another addition when she lamented, not for the first time, about missing her brother’s nuptials.
Designation 261 (The Wholeness Project) Page 14
