Offspring

by Steven Harper

  Ben eyed her warily. “What’s the catch, Grandmother?”

  “No catch,” she said, “except that before you decide, you hear me out.” She continued before Ben could reply. “Mr. Rymar, you know that your discovery has touched off a storm all around Bellerophon—throughout the universe, really. I have to admit that I feel...awed standing here, in the same room, with Irfan’s own son. I think the rest of the Council feel the same way.”

  Nods and head-ducks of assent all around the table followed this last statement.

  “I never wanted your awe,” Ben said.

  “You have it just the same.” Pyori leaned on the walking stick. “Mr. Rymar, because of your presence, we—the Children—have been able to attract three off-planet investors to help bail us out of bankruptcy. We can now remain solvent long enough to survive until this new generation of Silent is able to begin courier work. “s a result, we can pay our people again.

  “I don’t want to force you to work with us, Mr. Rymar. You said you’ve hated us your entire life because you see us as the people who sent your mother away from you when you were a child, and lately because we tried take your own children away from you. You may not believe it, but it tore my heart to let Ched-Jubil file his lawsuit. I was faced with the terrible choice of preserving one family or rescuing hundreds.”

  She tapped a control on her data pad, and a series of holograms popped up in the center of the table. A thin, ragged child tried to warm his hands in front of a meager fire. A Ched-Balaar whose ribs showed through her fur rummaged in a garbage heap for food. A human mother held the hands of two small children as they stood in a long, long line at a soup kitchen. A shaky town of tents and crude lean-tos stretched out across the forest floor, the people looking hopeless and afraid. Ben swallowed hard. Every night he slept in a fine, soft bed. His and Kendi’s house had been nearly destroyed, but there was no question about whether or not they and Evan would have food to eat and a warm place to sleep. He had given plenty of money to charities, but he had never walked through the downbelow tents or visited the bread lines. In all the fuss over the election and his revelation, he had forgotten how bad it had become for some people. For many people.

  “Some of our Silenced brethren have left us to work new trades in Othertown’s mines and on the farms,” Pyori continued, “but many have remained in Treetown, barely surviving. Infant mortality rates have soared. People—children—die of simple viruses and bacterial infections because there is no money for medical care. But thanks to your presence, we can once again provide food, housing, and medicine to these families. We can put them to work, give them their lives back.”

  Pyori nodded and the Ched-Balaar Grandfather sitting closest to Ben set a data pad and a small box on the table in front of him.

  “Mr. Rymar, I’ve signed an agreement that releases you from your obligation to the Children of Irfan. It also states that you and Father Kendi will keep permanent adoptive custody of the babies and the embryos. “ll you have to do is sign.”

  “What’s in the box?” Ben asked.

  “Open it,” Pyori said in that same, relentlessly gentle voice.

  Ben did so. Light glinted off a gold ring set with a circle of seven small stones—ruby, topaz, amber, emerald, lapis lazuli, fluorite, and amethyst. One stone for each rank of Child. It was beautiful, and its symbolism was clear.

  “It’s up to you,” Pyori said, “whether you want the agreement or the ring.”

  Ben stared at the ring. After a long time, he set it down and picked up the data pad. Pyori bit her lip. Ben pressed his thumb to the pad. The agreement erased itself. Then he picked the ring back up and put it on. Every Councilor sighed.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rymar,” Pyori said.

  “Call me Ben,” he said. “So. What’s this Offspring business going to be about?”

  Kendi-the-bat flitted restlessly through the Dream. His keen ears picked up whispers, tiny threads of the minds around him. Many were familiar—Ben, Bedj-ka, Keith, Martina, even Harenn and Lucia, who weren’t Silent but whose minds were familiar enough to him that he could sense them without even trying. Now, however, he was looking for something he had never touched before. He was looking for a sensation.

  Before the Despair, Kendi had been a tracker non-pareil. He had, for example, been the first Silent to sense Sejal’s strange talent at work in the Dream and he had managed to pinpoint his location to a single city on a single planet. Pretty good, considering he’d had an entire universe of Silent minds to sift through. Nowadays, however, his hold on the Dream was weaker and it was harder to find people. Last night something had told him to flee his own house, and Kendi suspected his subconscious had picked up something his conscious had missed. Now he was flitting through the Dream trying to see if he could figure out what it was.

  A stark round moon outlined the sand and rocks of the Outback in hard silver below Kendi, and the desert air was cold beneath his wings. Faint whispers coursed on the still air, and Kendi concentrated hard, trying to separate out each one. The phenomenon had to be local to Bellerophon, so he worked at tuning out the noise that came from other planets and star systems. His mind automatically rearranged the Outback to reflect this, soundlessly warping the landscape into a box canyon that encompassed Bellerophon and deadened the sounds from everywhere else. Kendi fluttered back and forth across the canyon in a cris-cross pattern, listening, smelling, even tasting. Every rock and stone, every leaf and stem on the stubborn plant life was a mind on Bellerophon, and he did his best to check—

  Kendi caught a strange double echo which immediately faded as he moved away. He flipped around and backtracked, flittering left and right, until he caught the sound again. It was the voice of someone in the Dream whispering to someone in the solid world, and the whisperer was whispering from outside the canyon. The mind on the receiving end felt familiar to Kendi, but he couldn’t place who it was—the whisperer was changing the person’s thought patterns and interfering with Kendi’s impaired ability to recognize who it was.

  Kendi, however, had the whisperer’s own unique sound in his ears. He flew up out of the canyon and followed the little thread of noise. His tiny heart beat quickly—this was important, he knew it. After a few moments, he came to the edge of his Outback. Past the boundary of his turf, the sandy soil melded into a posh office, complete with enormous desk, thick carpet, and huge windows that looked out over a landscape of skyscrapers. Cheery sunlight beamed across the room, hurting Kendi’s night-sensitive eyes. Sitting in the executive chair behind the desk was a dark-haired man Kendi didn’t recognize. The man’s eyes were shut and his lips were moving. Whispering.

  Kendi changed shape in mid-flight, shifting into his falcon body, and flashed across the boundary into the office. The man instantly sensed the intrusion into his turf and his eyes popped open. Kendi changed shape again and thudded onto the desk as a full-grown kangaroo. The man leaped backward, shoving his rolling chair away from the desk.

  “Who the hell are—” Kendi began, but the man whipped an ugly-looking pistol from under his suit jacket. He fired, but Kendi was already moving. He leaped straight up and came down, aiming for the man’s lap. The bullet struck the wall and exploded, leaving a hole the size of Kendi’s head. The man twisted out of the chair with an agility that would be impossible in the solid world. He rolled away and came up firing. Kendi flipped back into bat form and twisted away. The shots shattered the window behind him with an ear-ripping crash. Kendi dodged and flittered like mad. Psychosomatic carryover would force his solid-world body to duplicate any injury he sustained in the Dream, including his own death. Kendi was at a further disadvantage because he was limited to animal shapes in the Dream, meaning he could conjure up weapons of his own, but he couldn’t use them. He was also on this man’s turf, making it difficult to change the environment a method of attack.

  Kendi’s Outback had vanished the moment Kendi had crossed into the other Silent’s turf. The man bolted from the office and fled into a
newly-appeared corridor outside the double doors. Kendi twisted around again to give chase. The doors tried to slam shut, and Kendi turned sideways, skimming through just before they crashed together. He had to keep his quarry off-balance and not allow him enough time to gather his concentration and leave the Dream.

  The man was already halfway up the corridor, heading for a bank of elevators. His gun was nowhere to be seen. Kendi dropped back into kangaroo form and bounded ahead. He had almost caught up to the other Silent by the time the man reached the elevator bank. One set of doors was already open. Kendi gave a desperate leap. Before he could land on the other Silent’s back, the man whipped around, pistol back in his hand. He fired. Something slammed into Kendi’s leg and knocked him backward. Fiery pain tore at him. Kendi heard the elevator doors close and a moment later, the office vanished, leaving a flat, gray plain in its place. The other Silent had left the Dream.

  Kendi tried to get to his feet, but every movement caused him intense pain. Finally, he forced himself to take a deep breath and concentrate. If it be in my best interest and in the best interest of all life everywhere, he thought, let me leave the Dream.

  He was lying on the floor, with plush carpeting under his cheek. Pain throbbed hot in his left leg. His short red spear, the one that he stood his knee on like a peg-leg, lay to one side. Kendi managed to sit up, hissing at the pain the movement cost him. A bloody hole had opened in his upper thigh, and blood ran down his leg. He wondered how Salman would react to him bleeding on her guest room rug.

  “Muldoon,” Kendi said through gritted teeth. “Tell Harenn I need her to bring her med-kit. Now!”

  “Acknowledged,” said the computer.

  Harenn hurried into the room a moment later, med-kit in hand. She stopped the bleeding, disinfected the wound, and gave him a shot of painkillers before asking him what had happened. He explained in short, terse sentences.

  “You have no idea who he was whispering to?” Harenn asked when he finished.

  “I couldn’t tell,” Kendi admitted. “It was someone I know, but that’s a lot of people. I didn’t recognize the whisperer, either.”

  Harenn helped him up onto the bed so she could affix a heal-splint to his leg. “How do you know that what he was doing is connected to you?”

  “Because he ran like hell when he saw me,” Kendi said. “If he was innocent, why run? Why shoot at me?”

  “True.” Harenn fastened the splint around his upper thigh. “What is the next step, then?”

  “I’ll have to keep hunting for this guy in the Dream.” Kendi sighed as the heal splint took full effect and the last of his pain faded. “And keep watching for someone who wants to kill me. Have you seen Ben?”

  Harenn shook her head. “He hasn’t come back from his meeting with the Council of Irfan yet.”

  “That should have been over a long time ago.” Kendi stood up gingerly and tapped his earpiece. “Ben?”

  Pause, then, “I’m here, Kendi. What’s going on?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At our old house. I’m just...I’m okay.”

  “You don’t sound okay,” Kendi said, heading for the door. “What’s wrong? Who’s guarding you.”

  Another pause. “It’d be easier to talk about it in person, I think. Meet me down here.”

  Cold rain clattered off Kendi’s rain poncho as he approached the ruin of his and Ben’s house with Gretchen just behind him. The place was a ruined mess. Blackened beams poked upward like broken fingers, and the remaining walls leaned drunkenly. He found Ben standing near one of the drawbridges and staring with melancholy eyes at the wreck.

  “Ben?” Kendi said. “It’s raining. What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to get something,” Ben said in a distracted tone. “Closure, maybe. This was my mother’s house. Then I lived here, and I was looking forward to raising our kids here. Now it’s gone.”

  “Everything changes,” Kendi observed philosophically. “It’s the only constant in the universe.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re not here alone are you?” Gretchen demanded. “Who’s guarding you?”

  “I came by myself because I wanted to see this by myself,” Ben replied. “No one knew I’d be here, so it’s safe.”

  “Ben, it’s never safe anymore,” Gretchen said.

  Ben looked at the wreckage again. “Ain’t it the truth?”

  “How did your meeting with the Council go?” Kendi asked.

  Ben told him. Kendi blinked with surprise. “So you’re sticking with them.”

  “Yeah. It’ll help a lot of people who need it. Why are you wearing a heal splint?”

  Kendi told him. Ben’s mouth fell open. “He tried to kill you?”

  “Maybe. He may have been just trying to scare me. In any case, we have to find him.”

  “How’s your downstairs neighbor?” Gretchen said, changing the subject. “I never heard if she was hurt in the explosion or not.”

  “I talked to Grandmother Mee just now,” Ben said. “There was some minor damage to her house but she wasn’t hurt. She’s trying to sell the place, says she can’t afford to keep it up anymore.”

  “Where’s she going to go?” Kendi asked.

  “I guess she’s moving in with her son. He doesn’t have room for a garden, though. It’s sad.”

  “Yeah.” They stared at the wreckage a while longer, then Kendi led Ben back to the flitcar.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “A celebrity is a person who’s known for being well-known. “

  —Daniel Vik

  Over the next two weeks, Kendi spent every spare moment in the Dream fruitlessly looking for the whisperer. His spare moments weren’t many. Evan took up a great deal of his time. The baby was strangely hypnotic. Every so often Kendi would shake himself and discover he had spent nearly an hour just staring at him. It didn’t seem to matter what Evan was doing—waving his fists, trying to put a finger in his mouth, sleeping. It was all good.

  He was also forced to deal with the house. The explosion had destroyed the nursery, demolished the master bedroom, and badly damaged the rest of the house, causing the building inspector to condemn the entire building. Sorting out the insurance claims took up yet more time. In the end, Ben had directed Nick Dallay to handle it, but he and Kendi still had to approve offers, read paperwork, and sign forms.

  A bonded moving crew, carefully checked by both Salman’s people and by Lewa Tan, took over the task of packing and moving the Weaver-Rymar household’s surviving possessions to the new house, though for simplicity’s sake, everyone was staying with Salman until the election. Even though Kendi wasn’t directly involved in the move, he lost more time to answering questions and dealing with small crises that arose.

  Kendi tried to hook other Children of Irfan to searching the Dream for the strange Silent who whispered from an office, but without success. Every moment the monks spent hunting was a moment they weren’t ferrying messages. Every moment they weren’t ferrying messages was a moment the monastery earned no revenue, and at the moment, revenue ruled supreme. In the end, only Keith and Martina spent time with the search, and they turned up nothing.

  Ben, of course, was even busier. His face appeared on the feeds almost constantly, whether he was making campaign speeches and commercials, appearing at public functions, or just caught on camera. Spurious, often pernicious headlines about him grew like poison ivy. Offspring Caught in Hotel Sex Scandal! Offspring Checks Into Recovery Program! Offspring “dmits Doubt “bout Parentage! Offspring Gives in to Vik Side of Nature, Threatens Shooting Spree. The monastery and the law offices of Dallay, Muskin, and Kared made tidy sums by suing the more libelous feeds. The publishers usually paid up and went right back to writing more fake stories—anything with Ben’s name or face on it a guaranteed sell.

  In addition to the feed publicity came marketeers. Offers to name toys, games, food, even a flitcar after him poured in. Ben universally turned them down.

&nbs
p; Another type of offer plagued Ben as well, this one from women. Hundreds of female humans—and a few female Ched-Balaar—offered themselves as surrogate mothers for the remaining embryos. These Ben also turned down, but not without a shudder.

  “It’s like they’re offering to climb into bed with me,” he told Kendi one day, “only much more...much more intimate, if you know what I mean.”

  Salman’s initial burst of popularity wore off somewhat, but Foxglove’s dropped considerably, leaving Salman just ahead of Ched-Pirasku and his Populist party. The election was now a week away. Between that and caring for Evan, Ben and Kendi barely slept. They got even less sleep when Lucia woke them up in the middle of the night and announced it was time to go to the medical center. Harenn said she would stay with Evan while Gretchen and Tan got the flitcar. Kendi and Ben spent the subsequent ride sending frantic messages canceling various appearances.

  Lucia’s mother Julia and her cousin Francesca were waiting at the medical center entrance, as was a man in the blue robe and clerical collar that marked a priest from the Church of Irfan. Ben closed his eyes and wrestled back a spurt of ire. Even though he had performed countless blessings and rituals for various parishes within the Church of Irfan, he hadn’t managed to give up his final shreds of anger toward the organization and its members.

  “You want me and Tan to shove them aside, boss?” Gretchen asked.

  “Don’t you dare,” Lucia hissed back. “Mom! I didn’t expect to see you here.” Her usually serene voice took on a note of frost. “Or you, Francesca.”

  “Lucia,” said Francesca. “I’m glad you’re well.”

  “Of course I’m here,” Julia put in. Her words echoed off the hard tile floors of the medical center lobby. “I was at the birth of all my grandchildren.”

  “And I came with Friar Pallin,” Francesca put in. “He’s here to perform the birth blessing.”