by Lee, Cara
While her mother was distracted, she considered that thought. Hector being a telepath meant that Wynne wasn't a delusional patsy.
It also meant her near-constant fear over the past two years was justified.
Wynne was okay with being justifiably terrified. She wasn't sure what she would've done if she'd discovered she was paranoid.
Her mother gave her a sharp look, and Wynne's periodic table defenses came up.
"You know this dress," her mother accused.
She nodded before she could stop herself, but that was okay. Her mother would've found it suspicious if Wynne had resisted the emotional manipulation. "Hector liked it," she lied — too easily, after the past two years of frequent practice. "He was showing me what he would wear today and happened to pause on that one."
"Oh," her mother said, evidently nonplussed, before she frowned another time at the dress. "You should've told me he changed the order."
"I didn't know," Wynne answered. Being able to tell her mother the truth felt odd, after the past two years.
And that was a frightening realization in itself.
****
Hector picked her up himself, of course, since he was a higher tier than she was. In another hour, after the tier two people had time to pick up their dates, tier three Bridge would go pick up her date, the tier five Josiah Cleanuman, who had suddenly started pursuing Wynne's cousin right after he'd professed interest in her.
Not that Wynne minded. It wasn't as if she were free to be courted by him anyway.
Hector's cream-colored suit suited him, including the archaic bow tie that matched her dress, and he scanned her once — only once, to her relief — before meeting her gaze and giving a little, rueful smile. "Nice," he said quietly.
She dropped her guard just long enough to think Thank you before saying, "Likewise."
He looked away, adjusting his glasses with one hand and offering the other to escort her. She accepted.
Due to the tiers determining pickup time, the two of them would be first to the debut party, about half an hour before the tier two debutantes arrived with their dates. Hector's grandfather had used that half hour to impregnate his tier five date, and neither the woman nor the child survived to birth. Wynne wasn't sure if the deaths had been due to assassination or gene incompatibility, and she wasn't so tasteless as to ask the grandson.
Wynne rubbed her bare arms. "Thank you for the dress."
He inclined his head as if to say You're welcome.
"I know it's not your favorite color—" She stopped at the wry look he gave her. "I guess… I assumed. My mother made me pick something blue, and you often wear…" She swallowed, remembering that she behaved as a good little colonist and didn't make obvious that she would be leaving as soon as she could, so surely his common behavior meant little. What was his favorite color?
"Burgundy," he said quietly.
It was the kind of tacky thing a guy might say to tell a girl that he loved her dress oh-so-much, because if he loved the color she was wearing, of course he loved her appearance.
But his tie was burgundy.
He'd also been the one to order Wynne's dress.
"What would happen if a Primuman didn't pass examinations?" she asked idly, the kind of question that someone like her might be expected to ask someone like him.
Hector let out a low hiss of breath. Long enough silence followed for her to feel cold and for dread to coil in her torso.
When he spoke, his tone was low, nearly inaudible. "We…" He wouldn't look at her, turning away even when she tried to see his face.
She glimpsed enough, though. He was taut, with a furrowed brow. He didn't want to lie, but he couldn't say the truth, either.
She turned her attention to their walk towards the school's play annex, which had been converted into a ballroom for the debut. Not that Wynne knew anyone who could dance. She'd seen video of it, though. "Mom wants me to join my paterline."
She caught his glance her way, which was rueful. She looked away.
"Do you want to?" he asked.
Wynne hugged herself, though the bodice of her gown kept her warm enough that her bare arms weren't too chilled. "Of course."
He gave her a longer, measuring look, eyes dancing as if reading a page.
She sighed and stopped mentally reciting atomic weights long enough to openly think, Not as if I have a choice, then switched to the electron shells of each element, for variety's sake.
Hector coughed and hid his mouth with his hand. He coughed again and turned his attention on the annex ahead of them. He glanced toward the side entrance, pulling a step away from her before he stopped at her side, giving her a pointed look.
Not pointed. Expectant.
He expected her to follow his hints.
Without answering, she headed for the side door, letting him enter the front entrance alone. She wasn't sure why he wanted her to do that, but she was sure it was for her own good.
She just hoped his help wouldn't cost him much.
****
Wynne had farther to walk to her door, so she didn't bother holding back when she reached it. She did slip in quietly, though, and closed it carefully behind her. She doubted the action kept anyone from noticing her entrance, but what could it hurt?
"I don't have a girl," Hector's mild voice echoed down the hallway, evidently answering someone's question. "My friend is grabbing a snack before the festivities."
She recognized the hint, and she pulled out a meal bar to have the day's meal number three. Actually, he was right. She probably did need it.
"Your girl friend, you mean," an adult male insisted, in the smug tone that some used to talk down to others.
She kept quiet as she approached the makeshift kitchen annexed to the main room, munching on a snack bar that tasted odd. She frowned at the label, wondering what 'cinnamon' was and how she'd ended up with it.
"My friend who happens to be a girl," Hector corrected.
Wynne thought the exasperation tingeing his voice was a Nice touch.
He coughed. "Pardon. Frog in my throat."
She suspected she might've been the only one who understood that turn of phrase, but nobody asked for clarification.
"We hit Dyad yesterday," Hector continued. "Having a 'girl' so soon would be rather tasteless of me."
Wynne caught just what he meant from how his voice curled around the word girl, and her face warmed. And she smiled, a little, at the oblique put-down to whoever was harassing him. Hector Primuman the Fourth wasn't his grandfather, and he wasn't shy about it.
She finished her snack, tossed the wrapper, and exited the kitchen—
And the smile dropped from her face.
Because the man standing with Hector and so casually suggesting she and Hector were lovers was the governor himself: Hector Primuman the Third.
She'd never met the governor directly, just seen him a time or two at get-togethers her Imaguman father had taken her to when young — which was against protocol, now that she thought of it, but it had never occurred to her to notice before now.
It was all too obvious that the governor knew exactly who she was. A slow smile came over his face, and he gestured to the drinks table with the hand bearing a cup of something brown. "Miss Layuman, so nice of you to join us. Help yourself to a drink. The Servumen will be here soon."
Wynne flinched. Layumen were tier three, so she'd not grown up with Servumen taking care of her, but her tier two father had frequently had one or two, whom he used as go-fers. Servumen weren't even a tier — they were the nobodies of the colony, the idiots so dumb that they couldn't even be tier five… and the foreigners who wanted to join the colony or work in it for a while. Despite the lack of a tier, the Servumen actually had the fewest restrictions. They could get off-world far more easily than anyone else who had paperwork and job responsibilities that made it difficult to leave.
With what she'd figured out about the adults, Wynne found herself wondering if the reason Servumen were servants
wasn't necessarily because there was anything wrong with them.
Maybe it was because they were normal.
And if that were true, just what had been done to Wynne's brain?
Wynne took deep breaths, struggling not to panic and lose her periodic table defenses — elemental abbreviations, those were easy — with the appalled realization that she was likely every bit as freakish as Hector. Her brain had been changed into something not entirely human, but her abilities just hadn't manifested yet, for some reason.
Why hadn't they manifested yet?
Hector's eyes widened momentarily — pointedly — and he gave a little shake of his head.
Wynne knew she was disappointing him — that much of why he helped her was surely that she could keep up with him, to some degree — but she couldn't follow, not this time.
She didn't want to understand.
Tugging the tie around his neck with one hand, with the other he swiped the brown beverage from his father's hand and downed it in a gulp before his father could stop him, then handed the cup back. "Mmm. Thanks for the Kahlua. I think my tie's too tight. Do you know how to fix those, Wynne?"
She stared at him, shock-still for too long.
He smirked — an easy, friendly expression, with no sense of the Pull yourself together that was behind his eyes — and nudged her shoulder. "Arzon to Wynne. It's my debut. Did you not expect my father to be here?"
"I didn't think about it," she answered shakily, recognizing the opening as the save it was.
"You get your snack?"
"Yeah, thanks." She remembered how the best lies, in things she'd read, had truth in them. "Odd flavor, though. Have you had cinnamon before?"
"Your mother's favorite."
Wynne blinked. "It is?"
"The system must've… glitched," he suggested, the pause saying that the mistake was no glitch.
She decided against asking for an explanation. It was probably something frightening like Wynne already being deleted from the Layuman registry, anyway. "Um, right." She shook herself and focused on him. "Um, tie?"
"Yep," he said, cheerily. Which was creepy. He was never cheery. Quietly amused, sometimes. Cheery? Never. "Need some help with the tie. Excuse us. We'll be right back."
"No need to rush." The sly smile the governor gave his son said what he thought they'd be doing, and he caught her by the arm.
She tensed and tried not to shiver.
"Really," Governor Hector Primuman the Third insisted. "Don't hurry back."
Hector Primuman the Fourth gave his father an inscrutable glance. "Our attendance has been logged then?"
The governor's smug smile was appreciative of a message sent and received. "Of course."
Hector gave his father another look she couldn't read, this one longer. "We'll be back," he said flatly. "Soon."
From the startlement that crossed his father's face, Wynne assumed he wasn't usually so obvious about his distaste.
Before she could figure out how to respond, Hector pulled her away from his father, who let them go. Wynne didn't dare say anything as they quickly headed out of the annex, toward Hector only knew where.
She cautiously lowered her defenses—
"Os: Osmium," Hector continued immediately, giving a little shake of his head. "Ir: Iridium. Pt: Platinum—"
Au: Gold, she thought, and resumed the mental recitation.
They reached the wall of a building, a habitat Wynne recognized because she'd grown up a Layuman and knew all the colony blueprints. Hector glanced at their surroundings as if measuring something off, then stepped up to the building, a bit of wall with a bright yellow smudge on it.
Wynne frowned and rubbed it with her thumb. The stain didn't come off.
"Turmeric," Hector explained, smiling slightly. He glanced around again, adjusting his glasses, and jabbed two centimeters left of the smudge with an elbow.
She jumped. He winced and resumed walking along the wall, rubbing his elbow.
She stared after him for a moment, then ran to catch up. "What was—?"
They stepped around an external support for the building, and she spotted a door where one wasn't in the blueprints.
Hector went right up to it, casually gave a quick rap with the back of his hand, then opened it. He glanced back and jerked his chin to say Go on, and she slipped past him.
He followed, and the door shut, sealed, and melded into the wall behind him. Wynne stared.
"Bi-metal. That's one name for it, anyway. It has two shapes, and it hops between one and the other when the proper impulse goes through it." He smiled, evidently pleased. "I'm not supposed to be able to modify its settings."
"How…?"
Hector shrugged. "Only telekins make it, so I assume there's some special aspect to it that can't be accounted for by conventional physics."
Wynne blinked blankly, then glanced around, realizing they were in the 'private' section of this particular habitat… and it felt like someone's private garden. She looked to Hector. He went to one small plant she didn't recognize, tore off a leaf, and stuck it in his mouth. He didn't chew, just held it on his tongue.
His garden?
He indicated the plant. "Peppermint?"
She shook her head.
He accepted that with ease. "Good for headaches."
Wynne bit her lip, then decided to go ahead and take the opening. "I give you headaches?"
Hector snorted and shook his head — more as if his answer didn't matter, rather than denying altogether that she caused him pain.
He seemed… relaxed, more so than he usually was. It was less unnerving than the earlier cheer, because this felt more real — but that reality was itself disconcerting, because it meant he trusted her.
"That rumor's true, then?" That the private sections of the habitats were free from all surveillance.
"Which…?" He glanced at her in inquiry. "You can speak, here. This one's mine."
Wynne bit her lip, reluctant out of habit. "Are you sure it's… safe?"
"Yes," he answered, without hesitation. "As I said, this is my area, my… territory, as it were. They make sure to assign safe zones to…" He grimaced. "To those like me."
But what are you? she wondered.
"Gives us somewhere safe to unwind, after…" He glanced away, adjusted his stance and glasses. "I'd prefer if you speak, when you can. Less of a headache that way."
So she did cause him headaches. "The psychic stuff makes your head hurt?"
"Psychic?" He sounded faintly amused. "I'm not meant to be a reader. I'm more a…" His expression tightened. "I'd rather not say."
Two years earlier, their instructor had said, 'I'm sure you could kill me with that brain of yours,' and Hector had admitted to knowing he'd eventually be able to sleep, after he killed someone. Wynne could guess where his talents lay.
"That's all right," she said quietly.
"Thanks." He stared at the ceiling, which had ivy growing over it. "My father wants me to seduce you."
She glanced around at their private, off-the-grid surroundings. "I'd rather not be seduced, if you don't mind."
He nodded, still staring up and not looking at her. "The alternative is that they'll make you like me, and that can break a mind. I'll be in bad shape myself, soon enough. I don't want to… Sorry." He glanced at her and away — a little guiltily, she thought. "I don't suppose you'll forget I said that?"
"Why would they break you?" she asked instead. "Because you won't seduce me?" And why were 'they' so desperate? She and Hector had just reached Dyad.
Hector sighed, shaking his head. He looked away, red tingeing his cheeks as if he was embarrassed to tell her, "The genegineering used on me is known to cause fairly rapid degeneration, after adolescence. My grandfather's alive, you know. He just hasn't been able to walk since around Tetrad. He tends to stay in his…" Hector indicated the habitat around them.
Wynne did some quick math. "Your father isn't crippled." And he was past Tetrad.
"My father is impotent. I was conceived in a petri dish. They decided to revert to G2 modifications for me because they were known to produce the desired…" he gave a little smirk her way, "—psychic abilities."
She followed what he was saying quickly enough. "They're throwing us at each other because they want to be able to use your grandfather or father as genetic donors if your genegineering's had further unintended side effects." She frowned. "But can't sperm and ovum be frozen?"
"Not with the genegineering Primumen have."
Wynne felt distinctly horrified, because that was something that would only be known after learning it the hard way. "So you're your father's only child…"
"Because my fellow petri dish siblings failed to survive freezing." He adjusted his glasses. "No offense, but I try not to think about that much."
She imagined he had enough troubling him without also fretting about that.
She frowned. "Why am I an only child? And Bridge?" The colony needed numbers. Wouldn’t their parents have been encouraged to have more children?
He didn't answer for long enough that she thought he wasn't going to. "Bridge was thought sufficiently unintelligent to both encourage your own study and give you minimal distractions to your grooming to be an ideal mate for… a particular person."
She blinked, unsure which was more frightening: That she did have siblings, or that she'd been groomed since conception to be Hector's Partner. "That's… disturbing."
He snorted, which reminded her that he likely dealt with more disturbing things on a regular basis. Like assassinations.
They sat in silence for a few seconds.
"So," she said hesitantly. "The options are to let everyone think you've seduced me or to let my emotions get tampered with until I can't function without you?"
Hector fiddled with his glasses. "Seduce does have more than one meaning."
Wynne had to think through that one, but once she did, she thought she understood. "Make everyone think I'm falling for you on my own, and they'll back off?"
"Temporarily, at least. Hopefully long enough for…" He didn't look at her.
He knew, then, that she would be fleeing Arzon as soon as she could.
She didn't want to hurt him, but saying nothing would only hurt him more in the long run. "I don't love you, you know."
