It was about to become ten thousand.
Terry took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. He gazed at the lock as if he were seeing those things.
Then he shook himself. His eyes were red, but not so full of grief anymore.
36
The Banks of Green Willow
When I made my way through the tunnels to the Habitat Sector, they were not so dim anymore, or so cold. The security locks were closed, but not locked. Since I was most familiar with the access point I had used as a Servant, that’s the one I went to. When I opened the door into the green, living heart of Olympia, I found Ashur standing at the end of the pavement with his bare feet on the clover. I took off my shoes and joined him there.
He looked up at me.
He took my hand, and we explored together. Robot gardeners skirted us unobtrusively, as they had been programmed to do in order to avoid annoying the Executives. I realized that Ashur had never wandered inside the Habitat Sector like this, certainly not without Octopippin. And then I realized I hadn’t wandered either. Not like this. Not fearlessly, not in the open like a citizen with rights and privileges.
I synched my music with his as we wandered through the flowers. I knew the piece because Butterworth had been a contemporary of one of my old favorites, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Both composers belonged to a style of music called pastoral, because they evoked scenes of nature: the wind, the splash of water, the meandering of hills, and the distant majesty of mountains.
But The Banks of Green Willow wasn’t just about nature. It was about the people who lived there, about feelings we have that can’t be put into words.
Dragonette swooped into our idyll.
Before I could answer, another creature swooped into sight, a four-legged Mini whose body and limbs were webbed together with flexible biometal flaps that allowed him to glide. He landed lightly on my shoulder.
The four of us wandered together, all synched into the same music and the amazing sights. Ashur kept stopping to look straight up.
Our noses brought us back to ground level when we found the sweet peas. Ashur and I put our faces right into the blooms and breathed deep.
We found a bench shaped like two giant turtles and sat on it. A fountain burbled nearby, and I tried to imagine Ryan and Baylor Charmayne sitting there and enjoying the beauty. I couldn’t do it.
From our perch, I could see through one of the windows of a fine house, now empty of the Executives who had taken its beauty for granted. It was open, and a curtain fluttered. But there was no breeze.
Tetsuko emerged from the darkness behind the window and looked out at us.
He grinned at me, as if he guessed what was going through my head, that no Medusa units were close enough to defend Ashur and me if he attacked us. As if he thought that would frighten me.
I grinned back, and watched his smirk wither. He turned away from the window and was gone. I had a feeling it might be a while before I saw him again. When I did—if I did—our encounter would probably not be peaceful.
For years I had killed and plotted. Yet I hadn’t anticipated what Baylor was about to do, and I hadn’t seen Tetsuko until he showed himself to me.
But there were also things that only Medusa and I knew, things I would never tell anyone. I wouldn’t flinch to use those things when necessary.
I gazed at the empty window.
He pondered that. He was ten, and so full of promise. I didn’t tell him what my father had said about the man who composed The Banks of Green Willow. George Butterworth died in the trenches of an ancient war, cutting short a brilliant life. Being a young, talented person did not necessarily save you from gravity bombs.
We walked away from the house. I wanted to tell Ashur that everything would be okay. But maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe we could only hope to make it better.
Soon, Terry Charmayne and I would introduce more people to Medusa units and get the wider process of communication started. But Ashur and his friends were the ones designing the future. They already realized possibilities that we couldn’t see. They heard the music and designed inner worlds out of what they dreamed. Even the enemy in the window didn’t know what they would be.
We walked deeper into that forbidden garden, where moisture condensed in the air. Above us, the world turned and the sky was green with growing things. Our Minis flittered back and forth between us and the gardens, bidding us to look here, look there.
And look we would, with no one to tell us we must remain blind to keep the peace.
Don’t ya love it? Happy ending. We beat the bad guys. Okay, they blew themselves up, but still. We can’t be blamed for thinking we had won a victory.
But we should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy.
37
Vengeance Is Not Mine
Terry named me his top adviser. If he had still possessed Baylor’s power, that would have made me very powerful on Olympia—so powerful that the job used to be held by midlevel Executives who
were also versed in Ship Operations. Now many of those former advisers had been granted voting power in the House of Clans.
But Executive power diminished with the death of Baylor and his fellow VIPs. If I were going to throw my weight around, I’d have to do it with my dazzling arguments.
However, Medusa lent me considerable clout when we were linked, and now we could be so in public. All the voting members in the House of Clans began to receive implants within the first several cycles of that first meeting, and to link with their own Medusa units.
Ogden did not flinch at the idea of belonging to two clans instead of just the Schickele. We sent him off with Dabeiba, whom he had named after a goddess of agriculture, and then Medusa and I went in pursuit of gratification of a more personal sort.
When Medusa and I appeared in the door of the Lotus Room, all conversations came to a stop. I had already committed us to this course, so I didn’t want to turn around and walk out—that would set a bad precedent. But the host was too intimidated to approach us. So I looked up his profile and addressed him by name, in my Sezen Koto voice. “Fredrick, I am Oichi Angelis, and I am wearing Medusa, the Mistress of Units. She can’t taste food by herself, but if I’m linked with her, she can taste it through me. I have a special request for you and your staff. I would like you to help me treat Medusa to the best flavors the Lotus Room has to offer.”
Medusa smiled and addressed him in her own voice. “I’ve heard wonderful things about you.”
Fredrick’s eyes were wide. He had not failed to recognize that Medusa was the one for whom all other units were named.
But her tone had been inviting, so he rallied his courage. “I have just the table. Please—” He motioned for us to follow.
As we moved through the Lotus Room, every eye tracked us.
* * *
As Terry’s top aide, my power may have been diminished. But that didn’t mean there were no perks attached to the position.
Medusa and I were still dazzled from the taste bud–pleasing extravaganza to which Fredrick had just treated us, so we were in a pliable mood. But, I said.
I didn’t have to think about it for long. Kalyani had long since turned Lucifer Tower into her personal space, and when I inhabited any of the other towers, I got far too many visits from children who wanted to conduct long, rambling conversations about everything. I loved those conversations, but that was the problem. The children were entertaining, and I had work to do. Sezen’s old quarters had doormen. They were the perfect solution.
The first thing we saw when we entered was the tiger screen. It stopped me (and by default, Medusa) dead in my tracks. Gennady said he had returned it to the Kotos. I felt disappointed in him.
But then I saw the note on the chess table.
Like Edna’s note, it had been written on paper. I thought you might like these. It was signed Adem Koto.
But we couldn’t see anything that was worthy of the Koto brand until we looked in the dressing room and found Sezen’s clothing. All of it, with her makeup and her wigs.
We went back into the sitting room and gazed at the tiger—my tiger—for a long moment. And then we went to pay Adem a visit.
We found the head of the Koto clan sitting among the beautiful things in their quarters. He nursed a cup of tea in a seating area that nestled among the wonders. He was not alarmed when we entered without permission. He didn’t even look at us. But he could see us, because he said, “You really do look like her. If I had seen you from across a room, I wouldn’t have known you weren’t Sezen.”
I raised Medusa’s mask so he could see the face to which he had just compared his sister’s. We stood far enough away that he would not feel threatened, but close enough so he could look at us if he chose to. “Are you all right, Adem?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose not.”
I waited to see if he would elaborate—but I doubted he would. “You gave me a magnificent gift,” I said. “Thank you.”
He took a sip of his tea. “It was my pleasure.” Yet he spoke as if pleasure were a thing of the past.
“Adem, you got out of line before you boarded the party shuttle. Did you know Baylor Charmayne was planning to murder the voting members in the House of Clans?”
We listened to his heartbeat. “Yes and no,” he said.
I had expected him to deny it or to confess. This was an interesting compromise.
Adem raised his gaze to mine. “Baylor Charmayne did not confide in me. He did not plot with me. But I have watched the Executives all my life, from the outermost edge of their circles. I knew he was up to something when he invited Gloria Constantin to the Flyby. When I saw her in line, I couldn’t make myself board the shuttle. I truly felt ill, because I knew they were all going to die.”
I didn’t ask him why he didn’t try to warn anybody. Baylor Charmayne was the plotter. No one could have accused Baylor of such a thing and survived. Who would have believed Adem? Besides me, but I couldn’t have stopped it either.
Adem kept his eyes level with mine. “I regret the children. But I have been watching Executives kill their children all my life.”
Perhaps I should have pursued that line of inquiry, but his earlier remark had made me curious. “Did you know I was an impostor while I was impersonating your sister?”
“Yes,” said Adem. “You were too confident. You were like Sezen would have been if she were older.”
“But you said nothing about it.”
He almost smiled. How I could tell that, I’m not sure—but he looked so much like Sezen, and therefore so much like me. He said, “I knew they would kill you if I told. I would rather have an impostor than have no sister at all. And now that I’ve had a chance to observe you as Oichi Angelis, and I’ve seen your cohorts, I can puzzle together some of what you were trying to do. I admire you.”
Adem put down his tea and leaned toward me. “Terry Charmayne was a midlevel Executive. You’ve never had an upper-level Executive as part of your team before. Well—now you do. I can help you to anticipate their response to issues. There are enough of them left to make trouble for you—I can help you finesse them.”
His heartbeat remained steady, which could be an indication that he was sincere.
But my heartbeat was steady under most circumstances, and look at what I was capable of
doing. And if the universe had conspired to give me a brother, he would have looked like this man.
“Adem,” said Medusa, “as a voting member of the House of Clans, you will be paired with a Medusa unit.”
“So I understand,” said Adem.
“Once you have been paired, you will be one of us.”
Adem picked up his teacup. He seemed at a loss for words.
It was a shame he wasn’t a worm, like me, because I could have gone to sit beside him and he would have accepted my company as comfort. Executives seldom seemed to know what to do with kindness.
“Altan’s message from Titania has been verified as authentic,” I said. “He really did give Sezen his voting rights, and he also indicated that his power should be passed to another family member in the case of her demise.”
He wasn’t startled by the information. But what he said next was more like something I would have wondered. “Do you think anyone is still alive on Titania?”
“It’s possible. But I don’t know how probable it is.”
He nodded. “I accept my responsibilities. I will stand in the House of Clans.”
He revealed no distaste that a worm would take the liberty of granting him the right to vote. Adem treated me as if I were another Executive.
“I’m concerned about your loneliness,” I said.
“Honestly,” he said, “so am I. But the Kotos have always been—we were a lonely bunch after the Titania disaster. We never quite got it together again. Would you like some tea?”
I smiled. “Not this time. We’ll take a rain check for that. Adem, I know you’ve already received the new implants.”
His smile was the expression of an injured man, but it showed some promise. “I love the music. And the movies have been diverting. I think they’ve saved my sanity.”
“I want to introduce you to a Medusa unit now. The sooner you’re linked, the happier you’re going to be.”
Adem set down his cup and stood. “I don’t see why not. I had no plans for the evening.”
Medusa and I made room for him so he could turn out the lights. “I still don’t set the alarm,” he said.
Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle Page 33
