“Sure. He’s a great dad, better than the dads my friends have.”
“It does make him a great dad. But I’ve also seen him hold a gun to another man’s head, ready to kill to defend someone he loves.” She sighed. “You have no idea how all that translates into an intimate relationship. We spent hours just talking; about our work, what we wanted from life, anything and everything. And when we spent the night together those same attributes made it amazing. After about a week the damnedest thing happened. I was twenty-six then and had been with a lot of men. The one thing I had never done until your dad agreed to come into my bed was to fall in love. I didn’t even understand what it meant to lose your heart to another person. It hit me hard.”
“And there was that RuComm clause staring you in the face.”
“I didn’t think it would be a problem. We could cheat a little and in a few weeks we’d be on another planet where we could be together a night or two maybe. Certainly we could hide our love for a few months.”
“It didn’t work out that way?”
“God, no. Everyone that looked at us knew that all I wanted to do was grab him and throw him to the floor right there.”
I giggled.
“It wasn’t funny, Dusa. It nearly destroyed us both. Our team lead, Angela–”
She paused and the way she had said Angela made me glad I wasn’t her.
“Angela gave me a choice; take a bunch of medications to get my emotions in check or end my career right then. I took the meds. For a few hours I thought they were working. I felt like I was in control of my heart again. Then I saw Ted and my heart leaped and my head ignored it and that dissonance made me angry. She took me off the meds a little while later, but that anger stayed with me for weeks, it was the only emotion I could feel and it ruled me.”
She rolled off my bed, knelt down next to me, and started to braid part of my hair. “Dusa, that’s why you can’t join RuComm. What they did to us was cruel and they’d do it to you or anyone else that ran against their rules.”
“What happened to your team lead? Was she disciplined in any way for what she did to you and Dad?”
“Why would she have been? She was just doing what RuComm wanted her to do. Anyway, she died a few weeks later on the planet Cleavus. The Bovita clan from the Warrens on Bodens Gate had been exiled there, but we didn’t know it. Angela thought they were a lost Union colony. She died when the Bovita took over our ship.”
“Hannah, in the state you were in from the meds, you didn’t–”
Hannah interrupted me. “Enough truth for one night.”
“Just one more thing, please. When you said Dad had held a gun to another man’s head; that was just figure of speech, right? Not a real gun?”
She reached into her pocket and showed me a bullet, turning it between her fingers so it caught the light. “This is the round that was supposed to have been fired into my brain, ending my life. Your dad took the gun away from the man that wanted to kill me. He pointed it at the man’s head and was squeezing the trigger when one of our friends stopped him. Ted was going to kill him right there in front of me.” She put the bullet back in her pocket. “I always keep it with me. It reminds me of what kind of a man your father is.”
She kissed me gently on the cheek and I was a little afraid of her right then, and maybe of Dad too, which I think is what she’d intended. For a moment I questioned whether or not I really wanted to know the secrets of my parents past. But only for a moment.
“One more thing?” I asked.
“You already had one more thing.”
“One more, one more thing?” I smiled, trying to look adorable, which worked with Hannah sometimes. She looked at me and waited, because she’s my mom.
“What is it?”
“I know how much you and Dad love each other, and now I think I understand how much you loved each other when you were first together. What happened in between? Did he love my real mom at all or am I just–” I stopped, not wanting to finish.
“Are you just what?”
“An accident. It would make sense if my creation was an accident. There are times when I think I must be an accident. I have a weird name, and no one looks like me, and no one thinks like me, and no one really likes me much.”
“How can you even think that? We may not have told you everything, but what we have told you is true. Alice and your dad were deeply in love. He chose her–” Hannah’s voice dropped to a whisper as she forced the words out. “He chose her over me.”
She paused and I think saying what she had said hurt her, so I knew it must be true. She wiped at her eyes before continuing. “Now look what you’ve done. I’m presenting at the Union cabinet meeting tomorrow morning and my eyes are going to be all red.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. Maybe your dad will tell you another bedtime story sometime soon. It’s his story to tell, not mine.” She turned and stood looking at me from the doorway.
“I love you, Mala Dusa.”
“I love you too. I’m glad you’re my mom.” I said it hoping it would make her feel better, but I think she was crying when she closed my door.
CHAPTER 2
STUCK
Dad was waiting for me in the living room when I got home from school. Hannah wasn’t there, but that wasn’t unusual, her work supporting the government often required odd hours.
“What are you doing home? Didn’t you have a 1600 class to teach this afternoon?”
“Professor Colbert’s covering for me. I’ve spent most of the day trying to break your contract.” He took my hands and examined my palms and fingers.
“What are you looking for?”
“The pin prick. From what I’m finding you must have signed in blood.”
I pulled my hands away from him. “It’s unbreakable?”
“Breaking it would incur criminal and civil penalties and I don’t want to be visiting you in jail all summer. I sent a message to Father Ryczek, but it’ll take five days for a return message.”
“So I can go?”
“Try not to sound so happy about it. You have no idea how dangerous this will be for you. And do you remember how you complained about the extra ten kilograms you picked up moving to Earth from Dulcinea? Get ready for another five. And you’d better plan on not setting foot outside the Mission compound, because I told Father Ryczek that Hannah would come back there personally if he let you within ten meters of the gate.”
I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it when Dad gets upset. He says things he doesn’t mean to say and I get another piece of the puzzle. “Why would Hannah going back there be a threat?”
“Mala Dusa, please don’t tip your head like that. When Hannah does that to me I know I’m in trouble and it’s you that’s in trouble here, not me.”
Knowing that there was nothing he could do to stop me now made me feel bold. “I’m going to be there for three months, minus travel time. I’m going to find things out, Dad.”
He sighed. “When did you get to be so big?” He looked at me like he would rather ground me than tell me what I wanted to know. “Fine. Have a seat.”
I put my backpack on the floor and sat on the couch.
“Hannah told me last night that you thought you were an accident. Is that true?” he asked.
“I thought you were going to tell me about Hannah in the Warrens.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Not happening. Now, did you say that?”
I looked at the floor. “Yes.”
“Don’t ever think that. You were a surprise, since your mom’s fertility had been reversed, but not an accident. Your mom kept you a secret from me until we were on Bodens Gate and then only told me after you made her throw up in a trashcan one morning.”
“I don’t think I did it on purpose.” I slid off the couch onto the floor and wrapped
a throw around myself, snuggling in. These were the kind of stories I wanted to hear.
“I’m not so sure. I think you were trying to get my attention.”
“Were you in love with Mom?” I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to hear it all again anyway.
“Yes, very much so. I fell in love with her on Cleavus after we were abandoned there. At first we expected to be rescued in a few weeks. Then we became convinced that no one would ever come. Alone on a planet forever with just each other, I don’t think the human mind can put what that felt like into words. I’d have died without her. I’d have wanted to be dead.”
“You fell in love because there was no one else there?” I taunted him.
He laughed. “No. I fell in love with your mother because she was an intelligent, beautiful woman who only had one flaw.” I smiled knowing what he was going to say next. “She was in love with me for some reason. She made me better than I could ever have been without her. She was a brilliant geologist. And brave. She was more fearless than any person I’ve ever known.”
“Do I look like her?”
“So much like her. I always told her that she was possibly the most beautiful girl God had ever created, but that was before I saw you.”
“Most people think I’m ugly. My legs are too skinny and my arms are too skinny and my face–” I put my hands on my cheeks that were flat and angular, just like the rest of me.
“Most people are idiots.”
I smiled and pulled the wrap closer around my shoulders. “I feel so out of place here. There’s no one like me at school, except maybe Winona, and she’s weird in her own ways.”
“You are different, but that’s a good thing. You inherited your mom’s beauty as well as her intelligence.”
“And from you, Professor.” I reminded him.
He shook his head. “I’m just adequate, Alice was brilliant. Spending ten years with Alice’s father didn’t help you fit in either. He tried to turn you into your mom.”
“But my brain thinks like yours, that’s what Hannah says. And I screwed up Grandpa’s plan so badly last night that I believe her. Oh–” I put my hand over my mouth, realizing what I had just said.
“So Grandpa put you up to this?”
“Sort of,” I squeaked, my hand still over my mouth. “He thought he was helping me make a plan to spend the summer on Dulcinea.”
That made Dad laugh. “So you were playing him too? Your mom would be very proud of you.”
“Tell me more about her. Was she… different, like me?”
For the next hour I sat on the floor and Dad told me stories I’d never heard before. Stories about my Mom shaking uncontrollably from fear on the Margo Islands and then conquering those fears to save my dad and help him stop a war. And another about how Mom wasn’t popular and knew that most people thought she looked strange and acted strange and how beautiful she had looked in the moonlight on the Margo Islands when he’d first met her. My favorite was about how Mom and Dad fell in love doing a geologic survey on Cleavus even after they thought they would never be rescued and that they would die alone and it might be hundreds of years before anyone found what they had done together.
“She went hiking through the desert totally naked?” I asked.
“Of course not. She wore a big hat and boots. The sand would have burned her feet in the hot sun.”
I leaned forward, looking at him.
“Why not? There was no one there to see her except me and Merrimac, our dog.”
I laughed, trying to visualize walking across the sand with nothing on but a hat and boots. It was perfectly logical and perfectly outrageous.
“Tell me more.”
Dad started to open his mouth, but then a strange look came into his eyes, as if he had just seem the most amazing, enthralling thing in the universe. I had seen that look before, literally thousands of times, and I knew that Hannah must have just walked in. His eyes always got that look of longing when she walked into a room and so did hers when she saw him. I sighed. No more stories about Mom today.
“You two seem to be having a good time,” she said. “Contract broken, I take it?”
I climbed back on the couch and knelt down peering over the back at her. I wanted to see her reaction when Dad told her I was doomed.
“No, not exactly.”
Hannah looked at him and tipped her head. Yep, Dad was in trouble.
“So what exactly does that mean?”
“If she doesn’t fulfill her commitment there could be criminal penalties. If we keep her here she might spend the summer behind bars.”
“Good,” she said hanging up her jacket. “She’ll be safe from the dangers of the Warrens and we won’t have to worry she’s out with her friends getting drunk and having sex. Nicely done, Ted. I call that a win.” And then she kissed him. It was a long kiss and I think she may have used her tongue at the end.
“You can’t do that to me!”
“Nothing back from Father Ryczek yet?” she asked.
“It’ll be a few days, like I said in the message I sent you this morning.”
So she had known all along and just wanted to see me panic, wanting to see my reaction. I looked at them standing there with their arms around each other looking smug.
“Very funny. So I’m not spending the summer in jail?”
“That’s up to you. I think it’s a good alternative to dying on Bodens Gate.” She had said it in a casual tone of voice but I could feel the fear in her for my safety.
I sighed. That was another thing that made me different and weird. I can feel strong emotions in them and I know they can feel what’s inside me, although they rarely talk about it. When I was little I thought everyone could do it, then I realized it only worked with Hannah and Dad, and I thought it was a family thing. I must have been nine or ten before I realized my friends didn’t know what their parents were feeling. My friends laughed at me when I talked about it and then they weren’t my friends anymore. One more family secret, one more thing about weird Mala Dusa.
“I don’t care what Father Ryczek says. I want to go. I need to go.”
“I could take a leave of absence, skip the summer semester,” Dad suggested, “Go along and keep her in bounds. Or maybe talk one of my sisters into going with her.”
“No,” Hannah answered and I would swear I could feel her inside my head. “No, Ted. She needs to go out of bounds. A little.” She leaned against his shoulder and sighed. “Damn.”
Word came back from Father Ryczek a few days later. It was a long letter and he never once mentioned Dad’s plea to release me from my contract. He reminisced about the months Dad and Mom had worked there, and talked about how wonderful it would be to have Alice’s daughter with them, and how much in the old Mission was in need of repair starting with getting the front gate working again before the cold weather set in. He said he would make sure my experiences there would be both meaningful and memorable. He didn’t say he would keep me safe.
A couple of days before I was to leave I went running along the Sunset Trail south of Mount Humphreys with my friend, Winona Killdeer. She was really the only close friend I had and I think I was the only friend Winona had at all. She had her black hair tied back and was running in front of me up the trail, setting a quick pace while I tried to talk to her. She only slowed down when we hit snowpack about halfway up. Even then, she went another ten meters before getting bogged down.
I stopped and she looked back at me. Her dark eyes seemed too large for her face and she looked confused or mystified by what she was seeing. It was the same expression she usually had. When I first saw her in class I thought that maybe she was developmentally challenged. After two minutes of hearing her correct the teacher on current developments in genetic modification technology I realized my error. The expression on her face was because she sees absolutely eve
rything around her all of the time. If I were to ask her about this run a month later, she would be able to tell me what flowers were blooming, what the clouds drifting by had looked like and how deep the snow was that had encased her bare legs. I was the only one that could come close to her in our studies, like maybe ten percent of what she could do.
“I’m going to miss you, Duse.” I could hear the frustration in her voice. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you this summer.”
“That’s hard to believe. You always know what you’re going to do.” I sat down on a rock and drank some water from my bottle. “The first thing you should do is get out of that snow.”
She looked down at her legs as though surprised to see why they were getting cold. She came and sat down next to me. “I wish you’d told me you were considering this mission trip. I would have volunteered to accompany you.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God. It’s kind of a requirement for this sort of thing.”
She looked around at the mountains and up to watch a bird flying over us and I wondered how much raw data was flowing into her brain. “I’ve been reevaluating my opinions lately.”
“Really?” I smiled at her and touched her hand.
She turned toward me and nodded. “I have not reached any conclusions, but thank you for not mocking me. I get enough of that at home.”
“I would never do that,” I reassured her.
“I’ve been considering what I’m going to do while you’re gone. None of the options are as pleasant as those that included you.”
“I’m going to miss you too.”
“Your odds of survival are actually very good,” she locked eyes with me, “as long as you stay within the Mission. Each foray outside the walls carries a point five percent chance of being killed or kidnapped.”
Wandering Soul Page 2
