“I have a special treat for you tonight, my guests,” Baylor announced. “After supper we’ll enjoy some Turkish coffee with our dessert. It is my own special blend.…” He produced a coffee cherry and held it up so everyone could admire its rosy, ripe form.
Ah-ha, I thought, but do you contemplate picking them yourself, as Medusa and I have? And I felt a sharp pang of longing for my tentacled friend. How I wished we could taste these new foods together. I hoped that one day we would.
“We use the Dry Method to process the cherries,” Baylor continued. “The arid conditions that prevail throughout most of Olympia make this the logical choice. Once the moisture content drops below eleven percent, we can harvest the beans. They can be hulled, polished, graded, and sorted, eventually roasted and turned into the beverage that even the humblest inhabitant of Olympia can enjoy.”
I listened, because I found the subject interesting, but I also watched Gennady, who used nonverbal cues to relay his opinion of the courses that were set before us. “Try this,” he murmured, spooning a little sauce on my plate. The dual conversation should have been distracting, but I felt grateful for the challenge. I’m not sure I could have kept up the appearance of privilege if I had been given time to focus my full attention on the intoxicating repast set before us.
Now I wonder how much of that Gennady already knew.
We consumed the small meals set before us. Dessert arrived, an artful blend of chocolate and spices in a layered mousse. And the Turkish coffee was served in tiny cups, a potent dose of caffeine and sugar.
“One dose of this is all you need,” said Baylor, signaling the Servants to clear away the coffee cups and dessert plates. “Now we can have something to cleanse our palates.” By which he meant, It’s time to serve the wine and Get Down to Biz.
I had more warning than my fellow guests that a pivot was imminent, because I noticed the subtle stiffening in the stances of the Servants. This phase of the party was, by far, the most important. It was the reason for Executive parties to exist in the first place. So it was also the most dangerous. It was during this phase that Glen Tedd had doomed himself (and almost me).
A sweet fruit wine was served first. The coffee had also been sweet, but the wine was less so. I assumed each subsequent wine would continue that trend. I sipped just enough of it to sample its taste.
“Truly,” said Baylor, “wine rejoices the heart, and joy is the mother of all virtues.”
Gennady’s voice carried well, though he raised his volume only a notch or two. “Isn’t it interesting how much we depend on idioms and proverbs in our daily speech, even after we have long forgotten their origin?”
Baylor, who was unaccustomed to being interrupted at this juncture, would have shot any other guest a chilly look. But because it was Gennady who had interrupted, Baylor’s silence looked more like confusion than disapproval.
“There are no etymological records on Olympia,” continued Gennady. “You have no way of looking up the events or the cultures that spawned those idioms. Yet you speak them as if you had created them yourselves.” He looked at Baylor, his expression amused. “Unless you’re willing to become what you were engineered to be, your dedication to tradition will forever leave you in the dark.”
Ryan coughed as he almost choked on the wine he had been swallowing. So most eyes turned to him, and many people probably missed it when the color drained from Baylor’s face.
She didn’t answer. It felt as if she had withdrawn several paces, as if I didn’t have her full attention—and that made no sense. What had just happened was very important. Baylor struggled to regain his equilibrium.
“A toast.” Percy O’Reilly hoisted his glass. “To the lovely Sezen Koto, whose sensibilities inform those of us who are not blessed with a keen grasp of beauty and art. May you lift us all, Lady Sezen, to higher realms.”
I could perceive no irony in his tone, so I nodded graciously while the others toasted me and Baylor took several breaths to restore his color. Ryan had stopped coughing, and was now sitting with his eyes on his wineglass, as if something there demanded his undivided attention.
“Unlikely,” murmured Sheba’s ghost, and that is the last thing she said for the rest of the party.
Whatever Biz Baylor had hoped to conduct from that point had effectively been shut down by Gennady’s remarks. Gennady seemed unconcerned with this development.
I felt disappointed. Baylor had seemed to be moving toward some new perception of the role the Kotos should play in Executive circles, and I had hoped for a hint of what he expected that role to be. Now I had to sit while he stiffly conducted the party to its conclusion.
At last, Pachelbel’s Canon prodded us all to our feet. Baylor bowed and departed, his wife on his arm, and Ryan scurried after them.
Percy O’Reilly looked a picture of decorum, which only served to heighten my suspicions. His gaze lighted on everyone but Gennady, so it was my Russian who must truly have his attention. I watched him from the corner of my eye while Gennady and I strolled with the crowd to the movers.
“If that’s an example of the Charmaynes’ famous parties, I’m afraid I have to give them mixed marks,” Gennady said. “The food was excellent, the conversation—not so much.”
I managed to keep Percy O’Reilly more or less in my peripheral view. “You didn’t find the subject of coffee-making interesting?” I asked.
“Not on its own merits,” he said. “Lady Sezen, I’ll see you to your mover, but I must attend to some business this evening. I hope you are not disappointed with my manners.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I agree with your assessment of the conversation. But I’m quite satisfied with the evening.”
He gave me a beautiful smile. I had no advice from Sheba’s ghost, so I ventured one in return.
* * *
Stewards of the Charmayne guest quarters greeted me at the lift and accompanied me back to the front door of my quarters. Following protocol, they said very little to me, for which I was grateful. I was trying to decide how I should reestablish a dialogue with Lady Sheba’s ghost.
And whether it was wise to do so.
Unless you’re willing to become what you were engineered to be. How Baylor had twitched when Gennady said that! But he hadn’t been insulted; he had been—afraid. The idea expressed in that remark terrified Baylor. I reviewed the remark segment by segment.
Unless you’re willing …
Somehow that implied both choice and lack of choice. The Charmaynes held so much power on Olympia; yet even they had their limitations. It’s true that everyone feared and respected them. In fact, when it came to the Charmaynes, fear and respect were the same thing. But whom did they fear?
Gennady. The man with the wrong heartbeat. The alien.
… you were engineered …
How did Gennady know what we were engineered to be? What did he think that meant? Was he simply referring to social engineering?
Olympia and Titania could be considered social experiments. We worms were conditioned to go along to get along (speaking of idioms), and the Executives lived inside a social pressure cooker (my goodness, they really are everywhere). But why would it scare Baylor to be confronted with that obvious truth?
I didn’t think it would.
… you were engineered …
But Sheba was not the one who answered. Inside my head, I heard the sound of the Japanese stick drum. A spotlight illuminated my inner hallways, and a figure unfolded from the darkness. This time she was dressed in robes the color of storm clouds. She lifted her head and gazed at me with one eye.
“
It’s not a social experiment, Oichi,” said the ghost of my mother. “You need to take Gennady literally.”
I frowned.
She shook her head, her movements as precise as if she were really a Bunraku puppet. “You were engineered, Oichi. That is why you can talk to me.”
The ones who made us are long dead, she and the other ghost had said. She and Lady Sheba’s ghost were in a graveyard, sleeping, because they couldn’t interface with the dead race that had created them. Yet they could talk to me. I had thought it was because of my father’s implants.
I hadn’t considered the possibility that it was something about me physically that made our interface possible.
“Gennady’s heartbeat is different,” said my mother’s ghost. “You think he’s an alien. But what if he’s human?”
I shook my head.
So different …
“The race that created me is long dead,” said the ghost of my mother. “But if I can relate to you, something of them must be inside you.”
“I am.”
She pondered this. Her musings manifested as all four of her hayashi-kata musicians. The scenery around her shifted to the tune of the transverse flute and three drummers, expanding to accommodate a dome that revealed the stars—and row upon row of dormant Medusa units. It was Lucifer Tower.
“If I wanted a sample of Olympian DNA,” said my mother’s ghost, “I could get it from your Medusa units. Their brains are partly organic. So I surmise that you and your Medusa units were engineered at the same time, with the same DNA, so you could interface with each other.”
That was an answer, if not precisely to the question I had asked. But the news about Medusa’s brain surprised me. My father had never included that information in my education, either in what he told me or what he later revealed in his recording.
“The DNA must have come from the Graveyard,” said the ghost of my mother. “You will have to speculate how that came about.”
And while I hesitated, she spoke again. “Consider the possibility that Gennady Mironenko is here to represent the interests of the Enemy Clans.”
I watched her with my virtual gaze, but my real orbs were pointed at the fastidious tiger. He regarded the waves that were about to splash his toes with great trepidation.
That’s how I felt about the conversation I was having with the sleeping giant who was looking at me through my dead mother’s eye. Did she have good reason to limit her perception? I was betting she did.
The light illuminating my mother and her musicians faded. My scene with her was over. That could not have been more apparent if curtains had drawn between us. She left me with my tiger and my doubts, the latter of which seemed to be proliferating out of control.
But there was one thing I didn’t doubt. Not when I remembered the first conversation I had with Gennady, over chess, when he asked if I thought about God. My ancestors were Russian. Not just some of them—all of them. If that were true, then Gennady was human.
The rest of us were the aliens.
I contemplated the tiger. The waves from which he flinched were rendered in an orderly fashion that revealed their underlying structure, whether that was the intention of the artist or not. I decided that probably it was intended, because Chinese and Japanese artists were keenly aware of the patterns of nature.
Then I wanted to laugh at myself, because what did I know about nature? Someone engineered me. Someone had placed me and mine inside the tunnels of Olympia. Maybe we had human DNA mixed with the alien. Probably we did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have understood the people in Nuruddin’s movies. I wouldn’t have recognized myself in the Taira dowager.
So I knew what splashed the toes of the tiger—and I understood his expression, though I had never been in the presence of such a creature. I congratulated myself on being so intuitive.
And then someone knocked on my chamber door.
They knocked. My whole life, no one had ever done such a thing. People on Titania and Olympia buzzed, or they sent a message requesting entry, or they simply walked in if they had access. No one had ever applied knuckles to the surface of a door that separated them from me.
Knock-knock-knock. That’s literally what it sounded like. Who is joking around out there? I wondered. That’s very disrespectful.
Lady Sheba’s ghost reappeared. “Answer it.”
“Speak out loud,” said Sheba’s ghost.
“Who is knocking?” I called.
“Messenger,” he called back.
“Let him in,” prompted Sheba’s ghost.
So I opened the door. The young man walked past me into the room. He stood for a moment, glancing at the tiger screen and the other lovelies, then turned to look at me with a quizzical expression. My reticence had puzzled him.
“Close the door,” said Sheba.
It was a good thing she was there to warn me. Closing myself in with this stranger was not a behavior I would have embraced on my own. I shut the door and regarded him silently.
I had reason to be grateful for my years of work as a Servant, then. Because I could see he was a young man of high rank. He probably was no older than sixteen, yet he possessed the confidence of someone who was trusted with responsibility. “Lady Sezen,” he said, “I have news that concerns you.”
“Effective if you want to maintain secrecy on Olympia,” she said.
This Messenger method had flown under my radar. And since it was employed by Executives, even Schnebly, that master of investigation, might be unaware of it.
So Messenger’s self-importance was justified, considering his responsibilities. If any of his information ended up where it didn’t belong, he would pay a high price. That was a bombshell into my model of how things worked on Olympia, in and of itself.
His message was another. “We’ve received fragments of a communication. Considering its author, it could only be from Titania.”
“And,” remarked Lady Sheba’s ghost, “the other shoe drops.”
18
The Weapons Clan
“Survivors,” I said.
Messenger nodded.
Sezen and I both had good reason to feel emotional about that. She had lost most of her family. I had lost all of mine, but Sezen had also lost power. The members of her family who had voting power died on Titania. Now she and the other surviving Kotos existed to amuse and inspire style among the Executives on Olympia. They were invited to parties, but I could see no reason why any of them would be informed about a message from Titania. Unless—
“You were mentioned by name,” said Messenger. “The message appears to be an attempt to pass the voting rights of your clan on to you.”
“Ah,” I said.
Probably that was a good answer. It was certainly a better one than what I was really thinking: Holy Fucking Shit!
“So,” I continued, “they think it was a communication from my father, Altan Koto
.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Were there any other messages?”
He frowned.
“Executives are always concerned with their status first,” Lady Sheba reminded me.
But Messenger got over his puzzlement. “The signal was very weak. The only vital information passed on was about you. We could not determine their circumstances, or whether any of them are still alive all these years later. The message was a looped recording.”
There could be no question of going back to look for them. A spinning habitat the size of Olympia could make gradual changes in course, but something that drastic was not feasible. Shuttles and mining craft could make journeys that lasted weeks, but Titania had diverged from our course five years previously.
“Sensible,” I said aloud. “Had I been the Koto clan leader, I would have spent my last resources to send a message.”
That answer seemed to be more what Messenger expected from me. “The matter has been taken under advisement by the clan leaders. You will be informed of their decision.”
I almost said thank you, but thought better of it in time. I simply nodded.
He did the same, and marched to the door. He let himself out without a backward glance.
I locked up after him and went into my inner sanctum to prepare to bathe. As I passed through the dressing rooms, I peeled off Sezen’s clothing. I placed the auburn wig on its stand and removed my makeup. I paused in front of a mirror and regarded Oichi Angelis. Sezen had been removed along with her wig and clothing.
What remained was a determined young woman who probably did not feel so much fear as she ought to, under the circumstances. She was slender, tall, and strong. She was beautiful in the austere fashion for which Sezen had lately felt some admiration. She wanted very much to hope that her parents had survived on Titania.
But hope was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I stood under the shower, and I may have shed a tear while the water was streaming down my face—even I’m not certain. Lady Sheba’s ghost watched with approval.
“Even if you don’t continue in your role as Sezen,” she observed, “someday your life will be very much like hers. Not so well decorated perhaps, but certainly as challenging.”
Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle Page 19
