Samson had quickly become friends with the dog named Gator, whose favorite activity in his youth, Rafael said, was stealing alligator eggs. Samson struggled to keep pace on crutches. Gator disappeared down a side trail. They could hear his feet thudding, the brush crackling, his nose vacuuming scents.
The admiral paused some distance ahead of Samson to examine a spider centered in a web that spanned the gap between trees.
"It's big!" Samson declared, arriving beside her. "What is it?" The admiral named the spider by its Latin classification. "You're doing it, too! Milly always told me the Latin names of plants and animals."
"We seem to have lost your data device," she said. "I was hoping to talk to Milly."
Samson gathered both crutches under one arm, so that he could use the free hand to take Fidelity's hand. The crutches had appeared in the early morning, scaled to fit Samson's small stature.
"Milly didn't want to talk to you," Samson said. "Both of her."
"Both? What do you mean?"
"Maybe there were three. The old Milly was my teacher. When I got weak and sick she seemed to become alive. She sounded real and angry and afraid for me. When you found me, that Milly said good-bye. She thought I was safe. Then I got into trouble and another Milly began to talk to me. She was scary."
"She was a bad person?"
"I don't know. I didn't trust her. But I think most of what she told me was true."
"What did she tell you?"
"It's hard to remember."
Fidelity didn't want to press him for details for fear of distressing him. She knew Samson wanted to talk to her, if only to hold her attention. He had talked a lot with her and Rafael this morning, but not about things that hurt him. She had asked him about Milly's role as his teacher, wondering about the state of his education. She had informally quizzed him and discovered Samson was precocious in mathematics. He could perform computations in his head better than she could, unless she used her data augment.
The artistic clutter of Rafael's home fascinated Samson perhaps more than it did her. He had deluged Rafael with insightful questions about every detail that caught his attention. Yet, when Fidelity decided to take a walk, Samson came with her, leaving the house of wonders in favor of keeping her company. She was pleased he wanted to be with her, but she was afraid she would fail him, leave him unprotected again. She had enemies who could place Samson in further danger. She needed to find a place for him to be safe. Logically, that would be the Mnro Clinic.
They heard the dog barking in the distance. They walked toward the sound until they could see Gator, tail wagging, pacing around a fully retracted tortoise. Before they could reach the dog and try to rescue the tortoise the air thickened and clutched at them until they could no longer move forward. The admiral withdrew from the invisible barrier. Samson continued experiencing the barrier, testing it with his crutches and throwing sticks at it.
"It may not be healthy for you to remain in contact with the barrier," she warned.
"How did Gator get through? I don't want him to hurt the turtle!"
"He wears a collar that may send a code to the barrier generator that tells it to let him through."
"Why is there a barrier?" he asked, still close enough to see how it deflected his crutch.
"It must be to protect Rafael," she answered, pleased by his consistent curiosity. "I suspect large predators and strangers are blocked from entering the area around Rafael's dwelling."
"How does it make the air so sticky?"
"I don't think I can tell you accurately in a short amount of time. Perhaps you would like to be an engineer when you grow up? Let's move on. Maybe Gator will leave the tortoise to follow us."
As they walked she could sense Samson thinking in a serious way, because he was seldom silent for so long.
/
"Are you going away?" he finally asked. Fearing the answer, Samson didn't want to ask the question, but he had to know, and better sooner than later, so he would have time to argue his case for staying with her. He liked the admiral and he needed her, for reasons that he could not yet define and appreciate. He only knew that he felt completely safe when he was with her.
/
The way Samson asked the question made Fidelity regret the answer she would need to give him. She hesitated to reply. He seemed to react to the hesitation by abandoning the question.
/
"Will Captain Horss live?" Samson instinctively was keeping her from replying. He could see she didn't want to give him the answer that would disappoint him, and that would be her answer if he couldn't change her mind. He would change the subject, for the moment. "I saw you hit him," Samson added.
"I hurt him badly, Samson. I've been told he'll be treated by the Mnro Clinic. I'm sorry you had to see that."
"He tried to hurt you?"
"Thank you for assuming he was the bad guy, but he wasn't. Neither of us could control what was happening. That's why we couldn't stop you from being injured. I still don't understand why you went into the elevator building."
/
He struggled to tell her, for the first time speaking about the horror of what happened to him. She wanted to make him clarify the mysterious part about the translucent red stone and how he felt impelled by it to enter the space elevator building but she refrained from asking too many questions because he seemed agitated and confused by the memory. It was appalling to her that he should have suffered that way. It was also clear that Milly may have been partly responsible for his injuries. She no longer doubted Milly's existence. If that sparkling amorphous alien was real, why not Milly?
The alien! An alien on Earth! Her mind would almost not accept that it was real, even though her augments had recorded images and sound. The existence of aliens was, of course, a historical fact and a scientifically reasonable probability. Many Earthians still thought of Essiin and Rhyans as aliens rather than as humans from as-yet-unexplained ancient diasporas from Earth. They were as human as Earthians. Humans were aware that one truly alien civilization once existed in the galaxy but was long extinct. As yet, no living sentient alien beings were known to humanity. Even though she had proof, the realness of the creature in the African Space Elevator seemed unreasonable to her, simply because it was as vanishingly improbable as was Samson's appearance in the middle of her own improbable business with Captain Horss.
/
"Can I stay with you?" Samson asked suddenly. He hoped he had given the admiral reason to want to keep him near her. He hoped she cared for him. This seemed new to him, interacting with real people, yet he could sense how he might take advantage of whatever he could (never realizing his advantage was in how special he was to grownups and in how many ways he was special to them).
/
"What do you mean?" Fidelity asked, pushed away from her worries about the alien by Samson's question. She knew what Samson meant and it made her feel good. She wanted to know he trusted her. If she could somehow escape from the Navy and find a safe place to live she would feel privileged to adopt Samson and raise him. How realistic was that? Unfortunately, not only would the Navy not go gently from her life but her very being seemed poised to attack itself.
"Milly said my parents were dead," Samson said. "I want to stay with you."
"How did she know?" Fidelity asked.
"She said if they were good parents and really loved me they would do anything in their power to find me. Since they had plenty of time to look for me and never found me, they must be dead. I think they are."
"Samson," she said gently, "I don't know if I can take care of you. I want to, but that would place you in more danger."
/
Samson shrugged, and let his shoulders sag in resignation. He still felt hopeful. He wouldn't give up the admiral. "Maybe I can stay with Rafael."
/
Fidelity remained silent, not knowing what she should say or feel. At times she felt very possessive of Samson. At other times she was terrified of the responsibility. Beyond it all was the im
penetrable mystery of his existence. She thought about Rafael and how he might become a guardian for Samson. He was more accustomed to children than she, and had shown her by example how to interact with Samson in a relaxed way, as though he was experienced in parenting. She remembered that many of Rafael's paintings featured his own child. If Samson stayed with him he could be a reason for Rafael to extend his life and continue his art.
They took another path. The big dog came back to them and stayed near for a short time before scouting ahead in their new direction. They smelled sunlight on dry pine straw, wildflowers in humid air, blooming magnolias. The sandy path led down through the shade of a great oak and to the bank of a stream black with depth.
The Opera Master stood on the other side of the stream.
She stared at him from across the divide. He stared back. She felt trapped by a force within her that she couldn't understand or deflect. Neither of them moved for a long time. She didn't notice when Samson moved away. Finally she realized Samson was missing. She felt a moment of fear for Samson - and for herself, because she was making terrible mistakes. The strong part of her took over. She swept her gaze up the path under the tree. She couldn't see Samson or Gator! In so short a time she had violated her responsibility for Samson!
The admiral ran back up the path and found Samson standing on his crutches under the massive outstretched limb of a live oak. His alarmed expression told her everything. She slowed her approach, expecting the
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