Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy)

by Gillian Andrews

  “Let me take you to your bedchamber, Matri. You could sleep for a few hours there. I will stay on guard if you like.”

  “I can’t sleep anywhere else.” The mother shook the daughter’s restraining hand away. “Let me go!”

  They practiced for another hour, until Cimma was dripping with sweat at the effort. She was becoming weaker because of the lack of correct alimentation. Finally mother and daughter terminated the program, and made their way to the tanato chamber.

  Grace stood watching as her mother climbed solemnly into what was to be her tomb in the future, settled herself into the scatter cushions and disposed herself for rest, perspiration still making her face shine. Grace scratched her hair, worried. Should she call Vion, or was this sort of thing normal for someone who had recently been bereaved? She blew air out of a closed mouth, then made a decision and went to the tridiscreen, to put in a request for a non-virtual visit from the doctor.

  By the time Vion arrived, Grace had showered and dressed more acceptably. But before she took him to see Cimma, she wanted to hear all about his visit to Diva, the Coriolan.

  He scrutinized her face. “You seem even more tired than last time I saw you Grace.”

  “I . . . I didn’t sleep very well last night. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Hmm. Why do I get the feeling you’re not being totally honest with me, I wonder?”

  “Never mind me.” Grace was impatient. “You went to the bubbles, didn’t you? Tell me about it. Please.”

  “How on earth did you know that?” Vion raised one eyebrow. “But, yes, I visited the bubbles, to see a Coriolan girl.”

  “Did you?” Grace was eager. “Tell me about her.”

  “She must be about your age. Had made up a lot of symptoms which wouldn’t have convinced anybody of their veracity.”

  “Why do you think she did that?”

  “I couldn’t ask. Atheron was hanging on to my every word.”

  “Don’t tell me they have to put up with Atheron too! I thought only Sell children had him as a tutor!”

  “Apparently not. He was watching the process with great interest.”

  Grace snorted. “He would!” she said.

  “I see you still have him as class master?” Vion grinned.

  “Don’t I just!” Grace said. “I am so tired of listening to him. He is always going on and on about how I don’t excel in anything, and how all Sellites are required to fulfil their potential, if they have one, Grace, blah, blah!” Her mouth turned down. “He has a nasty way of saying that ‘if’ that makes me feel about the height of a Cesan worm!”

  “Yes, I remember,” said Vion sympathetically. “He always did have a masterful sarcasm he could pull out to make you feel useless.”

  Grace looked up at him. “Did he use it on you too, then? But you are . . . that is . . . you have finished your studies.”

  “I had a lot of doubts when I was about your age,” Vion confessed. Then he shrugged. “I finally gave in and took the medicine course, but there was a period of about six months when all Sacras let loose. Everybody turned on the pressure: my mother, father, and of course the excruciatingly derisive smile of Atheron. I think he was the worst of all.”

  Grace put her head on one side. “Are you glad you became a doctor, now?”

  He took a deep breath. “I didn’t dislike the studies, and it feels good to have graduated, but I don’t feel I was born to be a doctor, the way Sellites my age should feel. They all seemed totally clear and certain about their futures. There was never any doubt in any of them. I always feel doubt.”

  Grace gave a wide smile. “So do I!”

  He returned the smile. His face became illuminated. “There you are, see. That makes two of us!”

  Grace’s smile slipped. “Except I still have Atheron to put up with,” she said. “And there really doesn’t seem to be anything I excel at.”

  “There will be someday, Grace,” he promised. “I think you are a very special person, anyway.”

  “Thank you.” She reddened with pleasure.

  “Well, to get back to the Coriolan girl,” Vion said, “I couldn’t ask her what was going on because naturally Atheron was listening avidly.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I ordered three days complete rest and a few pills, to make it look convincing.”

  “Terrific! She is . . . I mean . . . she must be grateful to you.”

  “I think I was just pleased to have the chance to pull the wool over Atheron’s eyes,” he admitted.

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “So, what is this about your mother?”

  Grace explained the recent events to him and he looked thoughtful. “I had better examine her,” he said.

  They put this into practice, and though Cimma was suspicious she didn’t actually accuse Grace of having called in the doctor.

  “Now you are here Vion,” she said. “you might as well give me a medical. Grace seems to think I’m wasting away! You will be able to put her mind at rest.” Cimma walked up to touch fingers with him, and Vion stepped nimbly to one side to avoid being pinked by the dagger.

  “Let’s go into the medical room, Cimma,” he said. “I can look you over, and we can talk about it.”

  “Let me go first. I want to make sure you aren’t attacked on the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do. You really ought to be carrying a weapon of some sort, you know, Vion. It is dangerous to be walking around these days with no line of defense.”

  “I am considered fairly useful with my bare hands, Cimma,” he told her mildly. “I practiced full body attack at university.”

  “Good. Good. We all need to be ready. Now come and pay your respects to Xenon 48; we can stop at the tanato chamber, which is on the way to the medical room.”

  “I should like that.”

  Grace couldn’t hear any more of the conversation. She retreated to the receiving room to wait for Vion to finish his examination.

  He came in some ten minutes later.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Her voice cracked. She loved her mother very much, and it was hard to see her like this. Cimma had always been emotional, but she had been a basically happy and loving mother. Now . . . now, she was a different person.

  Vion touched her shoulder very gently. “I don’t know,” he told her. “She is unable to overcome the death of your father. They were very close, you know. I don’t know if she will be able to function without him.”

  “But I am here for her!” wailed Grace.

  “I am sorry, Grace. I am sure she loves you very much, but I am not sure that that is going to be enough.”

  “What will happen to her?” Grace was crying herself, now. “She hasn’t done any harm to anyone.”

  “Yet.”

  “She just doesn’t want to be the same Cimma she always was. Can’t we let her decide who she wants to be?”

  Vion shook his head. “It is a difficult case to evaluate. She needs time. Hopefully she will begin to function a little better. If she doesn’t . . . well, we will take that hurdle when we come to it. The problem is that she could damage herself or somebody else with that knife of hers.”

  “I hope you don’t mean she will have to go to hospital?”

  Vion hesitated. “I hope not,” he said. “But if there is no improvement there may be no other alternative – you know the rules.”

  Grace nodded glumly. Any Sellite who was diagnosed to be unstable was removed to Cesis where they were cared for by Cesan staff in the Sellite subsidized hospital. It was much safer for the sick people themselves, and the whole Sellite community.

  But if that . . . calamity . . . ever happened, it would mean that the 48th floor would be vacated, and that Grace would be moved up, willy-nilly, to the 49th floor – under the direct orders of her brother. Never!

  Chapter 12

  FIRST THING THE next morning Amanita was on the tridiscreen, clearly agitated at t
he news that had somehow filtered up a floor to her.

  “I thought I made it perfectly clear that any non-virtual visits had to be cleared with me first!” she said. “I hear Vion visited you yesterday, and I had to hear it from somebody else!”

  “Who told you, Amanita?” Grace was curious. She hadn’t said anything, and she was pretty sure Vion would have kept the visit to himself too. It appeared Amanita had ways of checking up on the 48th floor. She didn’t much like that idea.

  “I have my ways,” said Amanita smugly, “which are nothing to do with you. How dare you disrespect me by allowing a man to visit without my express permission?”

  “It wasn’t a man,” said Grace. “It was Vion.” Then she realized what she had said. “At least, it was a man, but he was there as a doctor.”

  Amanita’s look sharpened. “For you or for your mother?”

  Grace could have kicked herself. She’d fallen right into that one. Now there was nothing for it but to tell the truth. She was hopeless at lying to other people, they nearly always picked up on it. “For my mother,” she admitted.

  “Now what has she done?”

  “Nothing. She wasn’t feeling very well.”

  “Is she still sleeping in her sarcophagus?”

  “Not exactly. She likes to rest in it from time to time,” said Grace, choosing her words with care, a bit belatedly.

  “How utterly macabre!” Amanita gave a delicate shudder. “No question. She must be stopped. What did Vion say?”

  “He has prescribed some pills.”

  “What is the prognosis?”

  “I . . . err . . . I am sure she will get better very quickly.”

  Amanita narrowed her eyes as she examined Grace’s face. “Yes,” she said. “Or she may not. I can see I shall have to contact Vion on the tridi. As female head of house I can’t think why he hasn’t already reported to me.”

  “I’m sure he will do so today.”

  “Protocol requires him to do so.” Amanita sniffed. “Though I for one never thought him a patch on his father. Now, there is a man who knows his protocol to the letter, if ever there was one.” Her tone was admiring.

  “I’m sure,” said Grace politely.

  “If she doesn’t get better . . .” Amanita mused, “she will have to go to hospital on Cesis.”

  “I’m quite sure it won’t come to that. I can take care of her here,” said Grace hastily. She wasn’t going to let them put her mother in some cold and confining institution. Ridiculous!

  “. . . And that would mean you would have to move up to our floor. You aren’t old enough to live on your own down there.”

  They looked at each other, both aghast at the thought, though for very different reasons. Grace, because she would lose all her autonomy and would have to put up with her sister-in-law twenty-four hours a day. Amanita, because she regarded her sister-in-law as a disruptive influence on her children, a potential agitator against the severe discipline of the spirit of Sell. Grace was, in her opinion, a lazy dissenter who could be dangerous. She would not subject her children to such an influence.

  “Of course, we would be delighted to have you,” Amanita said. “Although, naturally, a daughter’s place is with her mother. Well, let’s just hope that things don’t come to that.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be a burden on you either, Amanita.”

  That produced a censorious frown. “You would never be a burden on us, Grace. I hope we know what our duties as Sellites are. Of course, things might have been different if you had made up your mind about what university career you are going to choose, instead of waffling about in that irritating way of yours. Your father should have . . .” She broke off.

  Grace nodded meekly, which caused her sister-in-law to regard her with suspicion.

  “Anyway, Grace. We expect you to do your best. You can’t be forever loafing about the place now, not when your mother needs you so badly.”

  Grace nodded again.

  “I expect to be informed about her progress, then. Cutting the connexion.”

  Grace breathed again. Her sister-in-law had forgotten all about the failure to ask permission for Vion’s visit! She had been lucky to get away without a severe censure point for that. She checked her watch, and gave a heartfelt sigh. It was time for Atheron’s lessons, which were a necessary evil in the day of any young Sellite. By Cian, how she wished she were old enough to be free of that burden! She turned a sad step in the direction of the Study Chamber where Atheron would be waiting for her on the interscreen.

  After the class she took some food to Cimma, who needed coaxing to eat anything at all these days. Then Grace made her way down to the ground floor and out onto bare planet. Again she felt the terrific release of tension as soon as she was outside. She couldn’t help but laugh. All her life she had been furious with Cimma for not having had her genetically modified, like all of her peers had been. She had always wanted to stand out at something, as each of them was able to. And now she had! She must be the only Sellite who didn’t suffer from fear of the exterior; exophobia! She gave a little skip. At last. Good at something! Well, it was really only a very little thing, but not to quibble.

  “I am the best on the planet!” she repeated to herself. “Finally!”

  The best on the planet nearly asphyxiated herself by crowing with delight, forgetful of the mask pack she was wearing bare planet. She stopped to fiddle with the valves, and told herself off, “You have to concentrate more, Grace. Keep your mind on your work!”

  And wouldn’t I like to have a credit point for every time Atheron had told me that! She thought to herself. Not that it had done much good. She had never been top of the class at anything, and in the end he had given up on her, and concentrated on other, more qualified, genetically enhanced students. These days their classes were undertaken in a mood of mutual antipathy, tempered on Atheron’s side with a heavy dose of derisive ridicule.

  The light seemed much stronger today, and she realized that Sacras was now visible well above the horizon. With the current conjunction of Cian and Sacras in the sky above Valhai, the change in the quality of the light was very noticeable. Sacras bathed the twilight zone in a distant, but golden immersion of light, making the landscape less tetric, more enticing.

  She ran down the last few steps to the lake, and nearly fell in when her shoes failed to grip on the sand on the edge of the dark substance. The lake heaved a little, and then a fountain of black raised itself out of the rest, a few metres in front of her. It twisted and spun in the sunbeams from Sacras, shimmering and iridescent.

  “Arcan?” She put both hands on the black surface once the welcoming fountain had subsided.

  “I am here, Grace.”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Ask.”

  “You told me that you can move your own cells around inside you.”

  “It is so.”

  “Could you move something much bigger?”

  There was a pause. “How much bigger?” The surface her hands were touching hummed.

  “Like this package.” And Grace pulled out the pack she had prepared before coming out. It was a watertight cylinder, firmly closed at both ends.

  “Put in on the surface.” Arcan instructed. “It is very big – my cells are millions of times smaller than this!”

  “I know. I just wondered if the same principle would work with macroscopic things.”

  “Where is it to go?”

  “It is a copy of the test paper that they will ask Diva to complete. With the answers. I downloaded it this morning from my brother’s interscreen.”

  “And why should your brother have a copy?” Arcan asked.

  Grace looked down at her feet. “My brother’s name is Xenon,” she admitted.

  The lake swirled in front of her and went even blacker than usual. Grace moved quietly back a few paces, in case Arcan would find it impossible to dominate his anger. For a moment, it seemed as if the lake would engulf her, then it subs
ided. She put her hands back on the surface after a prudent wait.

  “You should have told me before.” Arcan was staccato in his words. Again the lake swirled.

  “I know. When you told me about the apprentices who died. I thought straight away that I should tell you. But I was scared of what you would say, what you would do.”

  “That is not an honourable way to act, Grace.”

  She hung her head. “I know.”

  “I do not understand you, but I see that the decision was truly difficult for you. You owe me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I forgive you, so one day you will forgive me.”

  Her brow cleared. “Oh, all right. I won’t forget. I owe you!”

  “Very well. Now. You want me to move this package to Diva?”

  “Yes, but only if Atheron is not monitoring her at that moment.”

  Arcan gave a shimmer. “I think we can arrange some . . .” and all the lake seemed to glitter. “interference.” Slowly the packet disappeared, engulfed by the dark lake. Grace watched it as it got smaller and smaller and then disappeared altogether. She had to wait quite a long time before Arcan communicated again with her.

  “It is there,” he said.

  “Great! Can you let me speak to Diva?”

  Arcan patched her through. The Coriolan girl was excited. “What is this? A packet just appeared through the walls of my bubble!”

  “I am Grace. Please make sure Atheron never catches sight of the packet.”

  “The interscreen blinked out a few moments ago.”

  “I know, but that won’t last for long. You will have to hide the package somewhere – it is the test they will give you when you are better, with the answers.”

  “Grace!” The girl was overwhelmed. “Thank you! But how did you . . .”

  Grace bit her lip. “I am Xenon’s sister,” she admitted.

  “Cool!”

  That was not the reaction she had expected. She bent her head to one side. “Are you not cross?”