Jenna Starborn

by Sharon Shinn

  But it would not be so bleak as all that. Half-cits were allowed to work, and keep their wages (though they generally were employed in menial jobs and taxed at exorbitant rates). They could marry. They could not vote and they could not own extensive property and they were strongly discouraged from reproducing (though these days you heard fewer stories of half-cit children being whisked away from their mothers’ arms and disappearing into some unmentionable hell). But they could be productive members of a vast and far-flung society, and I had hopes of one day finding my entrée into that universe. I believed I could gain some useful skills, and find worthwhile employment and support myself in some not wholly distasteful enterprise; and it was this goal that gave me the strength to go on during my darkest days under Aunt Rentley’s roof. I was not valued here, but someday, somewhere, in the smallest of positions, someone would value me, and on that slim hope I fed even when I could take in no other sustenance.

  That night, dinner was torture. My awkward position in the household made it impossible for me to dine with the servants, so I always took my meals with Aunt Rentley and Jerret. Usually they ignored me, which was easy to do, as the table was long and narrow, and we sat as far from one another as we could. I always ate as quickly and as quietly as possible, though Aunt Rentley invariably remarked on my slurping or chewing sounds, and I excused myself from the table as soon as I was able.

  This night, though I ate my soup as noiselessly as I could, my gestures or my appearance or my very presence irritated Aunt Rentley almost at once.

  “Sweet Lord Yerni, girl, can’t you manage to swallow your food with a little less commotion?” Aunt Rentley exclaimed. “I declare, my son and I can hardly hear each other speak for all the racket you’re making.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, though I did not feel at all sorry; I felt maligned. “I can eat with Betista if you’d rather.”

  “Eat with Betista! Of course you could not! Eat with the servants, what will you be saying next ...” Her voice trailed off. Down the length of the table I could feel her eyes examining me. “What in the world have you done to yourself? You’ve dirt all around your neck.”

  I took another spoonful of my soup, this time sucking it up with the noisiest inhalation I could manage. “It’s not dirt,” I said.

  “Stop that! Eat like a lady,” Aunt Rentley said sharply. “If it’s not dirt, then what is it?”

  I knew better—and Betista had warned me—but I could not help myself. I was angry, and my face hurt, and my muscles still ached with that remembered brutality. So I said, calmly as you please, “A bruise. Jerret choked me in the hall.”

  “I did not!” Jerret squealed just as Aunt Rentley uttered a sharp exclamation of disbelief.

  “Wicked girl!” she cried. “To lie about your betters in such a way!”

  I shrugged. “I’m not lying. He pushed me, and he choked me, and he wanted me to be hurt.”

  “Lying! She’s lying!”

  Aunt Rentley was on her feet, pointing a trembling finger at me. “You will go to your room, miss, and you will meditate on your sins, and you will not be allowed back at this table—no, nor shall you have any dinner or any breakfast or any food at all—until you apologize to Jerret.”

  I pushed my chair back and stood up. This was not the first time I had been banished from the table and told I would skip a meal or two, but this time it looked like starvation to me, for I would not apologize to Jerret if it meant my very death. “I feel sorry for you,” I remarked. “To be so blind that you love someone so cruel.”

  She actually gasped. “Sorry for me! You—you—lying, terrible creature, it is yourself you should feel sorry for, for your evil ways will lead you to damnation and hellfire—”

  “I’m not the one with evil ways,” I said, still in the calm, certain voice that I knew roused her to fury, and yet I could not stop myself. She was wrong; I was right; and though I knew enough of the world to realize that that guaranteed me nothing, still I could not bear to back down from a stance I knew was proper. “Your son is the liar, and your son is the unkind one, and he is the one who would face damnation and hellfire, if there were such things awaiting us after death, which there are not—”

  I had not thought she could grow angrier or more red-faced, but at this heresy she did both, stamping her foot this time in earnest. “Godless child!” she shrieked, for she worshiped most devotedly at the Church of the Five Saviors. “To insult me—and my son—and then to scoff at the Lords themselves—”

  Jerret had lost interest in our argument a few strophes ago, for he was now spooning up food with great concentration, but at this he said, “Stupid PanEquist. Now you really will die and go to hell.”

  “Go! Before I call one of the servants in to throw you in your chamber!” Aunt Rentley panted. “To your room! And you will not come out, or speak to a soul, until I grant you permission! Now out! Out!”

  I laid my fork on the table with great deliberation, stood quite slowly, and nodded my head most gravely in her direction. “I am glad to go,” I said, and headed with dignity out the door.

  Soon enough I was back in my room, a small, ill-lit chamber on the third floor, a level below the servants but nowhere near the family suites. A few guest bedrooms could be found on this story, though they had never been used in my experience, and a schoolroom, some storage rooms, and an infinite number of closets. There were days mine were the only feet to patter down the corridor—weeks, even. I could be banished here and completely forgotten, and my bones might not be found till a new tenant moved in and began exploring.

  I climbed to the middle of my bed and sat, looking around at the forbidding gray walls. This had always been a haven to me, a place where neither Jerret nor Aunt Rentley would bother to come to torment me. But to stay here till I starved ... even my stubborn soul quailed at that. Surely Betista would not let such a fate befall me. Surely even Aunt Rentley would at some point remember my existence.

  I sat for a few moments unmoving, my heart heavy and my thoughts bleak, then I shook my head and looked around me for distractions. Books were my constant solace, for Jerret monopolized the StellarNet computer screen that offered us entertainment and a view on the events of the Allegiance, but he was not much of a reader. Neither was Aunt Rentley, and the only reason the house held any books at all was that the former tenant had left behind an entire library of very rare volumes, and Aunt Rentley had been too selfish to sell them. She knew that people she respected placed a high value on actual books, and so she liked to have them about her, but I was the true beneficiary. I would creep down to the library, steal a volume from its overloaded shelves, and spirit it up to my room to be read at leisure. I had devoured many of the classics of Baldus and the Allegiance, and I considered all the great authors of the day my personal friends.

  But when I opened the drawer on my nightstand, the item that I first encountered was not a novel but a treatise on the PanEquist philosophy, which I had been studying for some weeks. Betista had given it to me, whispering an admonition to keep it hidden from my aunt, and we had talked it over with great animation when we had a few moments alone in the kitchen. I had heard of the PanEquists, of course, for on those rare occasions when I did get a chance to browse over the StellarNet, they were often to be found on the news sites. But until I had read this tract, I had had no clear idea what their beliefs were and how they viewed the world.

  Though I had no real need to refresh my memory, I perused the pamphlet again, starting at the beginning and reading with great pleasure the articles of belief. “Whereas the Goddess is an infinite Goddess, a Goddess of all places, all planets, all peoples; whereas the Goddess created every creature, from the simplest invisible microbe to the most complex member of mankind; whereas the Goddess created not only the animals of the universe, but the trees, the rocks, the soil, and the water; we believe that the Goddess loves each of these things equally, that there is no difference between one being and another, one atom or another; that all thin
gs are the same and all things are equal. Thus I am no more important to the Goddess than the spider on the wall or the exploding fire of the nearest star; we are one, and we are the same in the eyes of the Goddess.”

  Yes—exactly—in so many words were put down the feelings I had had since childhood but not known how to articulate. Aunt Rentley believed I was inferior because of the manner of my creation; the government believed I was invisible because of my undesirable legal status; Jerret believed I was insignificant because he could hurt me, and torment me, and buy things I would never be able to own. But I was the equal to all of them in the Goddess’s eyes. I was fully human, fully alive, fully integrated into the source and flow of the universe. I belonged here; my breath and my molecules and the blood in my body were revered by the great spirit of the universe. It was the PanEquists who saw the truth, and so I was one of them, heart and soul, in secret, and in exultation.

  I was in my room five days before anyone remembered my existence. The first two days I was hungry, and I prowled the room looking for forgotten cakes and crackers that I might have left carelessly behind on some more provident day. I had plenty of water, for I had my own small bathroom where I could refresh myself daily, so thirst was not a problem; and hunger was only a problem for a while. By the third day, I was listless but not unhappy. My stomach no longer roared and pleaded for food—indeed, I was indifferent to the very thought of eating. By the fourth day, I cared even less about the missed meals. I was feeling light, wispy, fanciful, and odd, but not hungry. I spent a good deal of time sitting at my single window, watching the foreign roses shiver in the hostile breezes, and wondering which of us would die first.

  I also watched the cars pulling up the long, graded drive, for this was the day of Jerret’s party, and every notable member of Aunt Rentley’s acquaintance was arriving to celebrate. I had a deep interest in things mechanical, and so I watched with interest as each new model arrived. There was the Stratten Aircar, a marvel when it had been introduced, but considered inefficient and cumbersome now; there was the sleeker, more powerful Killiam version, which could circle the planet without the need for maintenance or refueling. I pressed my face against the glass to get a better look at the Organdie Elite and the Vandeventer II, and for one of the few times in my life I was envious of others.

  Sounds and scents of the party drifted up to my level as the hours went by. I heard laughter, music, shrieks of merriment from the children who had been invited, the lower rumble of adult voices in both serious and comical conversation. There were to be games played on the south lawns, but my window faced north, so I could not even watch these activities. And once the sunlight faded, there was nothing to see out my window at all, not even the comings and goings of the great aeromobiles. I sighed, and returned to my bed. I lay there, sniffing with disembodied pleasure the faint smells of the grand banquet being laid out below. I could imagine the fruits, meats, vegetables, pastries, and other fine dishes being sampled and exclaimed over, but I was so far removed from hunger that I did not care that I had no chance to sample them.

  The banquet—indeed, the party—seemed to go on well into the night. I lay dreamily on my bed, envisioning the lazy good nature of the guests as they reached the midnight hour of reveling. They would be smiling through their yawns, and patting their full stomachs, and crying out to one another, “By Lord Yerni’s bones! It must be time for us to be going!” And yet they would stay for one more slice of cake, another moment’s gossip, a final good-bye to the hostess who had presented such an elegant affair. Even when I sensed the house beginning to empty, saw the headlights of the aircars traveling across the ceiling of my room, I could not summon the energy to rise to my feet and cross to the window again. I lay on the bed, imagining the slow exodus, and smiled to myself at the grand sight it must be.

  I was still smiling the next morning when they found me, and I was still too weak to rise to my feet, and eventually all the bustle and riot that surrounded me grew too great for my brain to sort out, and so I closed my eyes and slept.

  I had not been to a hospital before, and so I was fascinated with the machinery. There was equipment in my room, attached to me; there was equipment down every hallway, connected by cords to other patients or plugged into unfamiliar sockets on the walls. Everything beeped, hummed, flashed, and monitored with such a lovely, brilliant array of signals that I could not stop watching and trying to understand. My night nurse, a cyborg, caught my interest early on, and explained the functions of various machines. She even taught me how to study my own readouts and determine my progress.

  Which was unfathomably slow. I had not expected to waken in a hospital in any case; most household illnesses were diagnosed in the PhysiChamber, a closet-size computer-controlled room where all the functions of the body could be scanned and analyzed. In point of fact, I had rarely had occasion to be tucked inside this room, since I was seldom sick and what few ailments I had succumbed to had never been deemed serious. Jerret and Aunt Rentley, on the other hand, used it on an almost weekly basis to check the state of their health.

  But a hospital—that bespoke a real state of emergency. I could not believe a few days without food had reduced me to such a state. Which I observed to the cyborg.

  “Is that what the trigger was?” she asked in her pleasant, neutral voice. She was nearly eighty percent machine, from what I could tell; her face was attractive but not particularly expressive, and her touch was preternaturally gentle. Obviously I was in a half-cit ward; no cyborg would be allowed to nurse a full citizen. “Starvation?”

  “Does five days make starvation?” I wanted to know.

  She adjusted one of the dials while I watched. “Not for a healthy adult, but for a malnourished child, that’s a dangerous period of time to pass without eating.”

  “I had water,” I offered.

  She nodded. “That’s why you’re still alive.”

  “I’ve gone hungry before,” I said.

  She nodded again. “Many times. And been physically mistreated. The doctors are asking your aunt about these abuses. There is also a legal representative present.”

  My eyes opened wide at this. I could not imagine my aunt reacting kindly to any inquiries about her treatment of me. “I am only a half-cit,” I said.

  “That status only prevents you from attaining certain property-oriented goals,” she said, still in that precise, unemotional voice. “It does not allow others to harm or neglect you.”

  “You’re a cyborg, aren’t you?” I asked. Such creatures had not come my way often, at least not to talk to. Aunt Rentley had a force of maybe eight who maintained the grounds and worked her scant arable fields, but they were never allowed inside the house and I had never had a real conversation with one of them. They were considered lower than the half-cits, and many people were actually afraid of them. Certainly my aunt was.

  The nurse nodded. Her hair was more perfectly coiffed than any human’s hair would be; her skin had a flawless, elastic look to it that made it appear melted over her bones. If she had bones. Perhaps it was a metal framework beneath the layer of supposed flesh.

  “Cyborg, but human enough to be happy,” she said, smiling. It was a slow, strange smile, a little dreamy, a little sad, as if thoughts circled through her brain that could not show on her artificial face. Then she patted the pillow upon which my head was resting. “Now it is time for you to sleep. Your aunt will be here in the morning.”

  Obediently, I lay back on my pillows as if to rest. “And the doctors? Will I be seeing them? I must have been asleep every time they have been here before, for I have never seen them.”

  She touched my cheek with that soft, kind hand. Again her expression seemed strange, as if her eyes and lips could not convey the emotion that coursed through her. “Oh, yes, the doctors will be here with your aunt,” she said. “I think you will be interested in all they have to say.”

  In fact, the room seemed crowded the next morning when everyone even remotely interested i
n my well-being gathered around my bed: my aunt, two doctors, a representative from the Social Services Agency, and a tall man I vaguely recognized from his past visits to my aunt’s house, whom I believed to be her lawyer. And me.

  One of the doctors, a wiry young black-haired woman, seemed furious. “Basic physical records show this child has been systematically mistreated for the whole course of her existence,” she said in a cold voice that would have made me shiver had it been directed at me. “There are evidences of broken bones that were not properly set, common childhood diseases that were not treated, recent internal damage to the stomach which I can only suppose was inflicted by some kind of blow, historical malnourishment that has contributed to slow growth and possible deformities that I cannot identify yet—would you like me to go on?”

  My aunt was furious as well. “I have treated this girl as if she was my own daughter—I have fed her, clothed her, educated her, watched over her—”

  “With the result that she is stunted, bruised, starved, and—”

  “I believe we all understand your position,” the lawyer intervened. “Mrs. Rentley is very sorry to have caused you distress over the girl’s condition. In the future we will—”

  “In the future, Jenna should be out of Mrs. Rentley’s care,” the doctor said shortly.

  “And who will care for her, pray, if not me?” my aunt said sharply. “She is not a criminal or a wayward girl, so none of those institutions will take her in. She has cost me no end of trouble and expense, it is true, but I have done my best by her and stand prepared to continue to do so. But not if people say nasty things to me and accuse me of things I have not done—”