“Well that’s the key right there,” Salman said. “Those who need children make poor parents. Those who want them make fine ones.”
It seemed as if the universe were siding with Ara’s mother. Two days later, Ara and her compatriots were encased in vacuum suits, inspecting a derelict ship they had found while tracking down rumors of an illegal Silent slave ring. The ship orbited the moon of a gas giant and appeared to have taken heavy damage in a firefight. It was Ara’s guess that the ship had been transporting Silent slaves and had run afoul of other pirates. The ship was completely empty. Cargo and crew had either been evacuated, captured, or blown into space. Ara had just been about to leave the cargo hold when she came across a star-shaped metallic object the size of a basketball. It lay forgotten in a corner. She caught her breath, recognizing it as a cryo-module for embryos. The readout said they had been frozen in the same year Benjamin Heller had died.
Back on her own ship, a medical scan revealed that the module contained eighty-seven embryos, a dozen of which were still viable, and all of which carried the genes for Silence. Grandfather Melthine, Ara’s superior, was uncertain what to do with the embryos once Ara returned with them to Bellerophon. They could not be placed in artificial wombs and grown to maturation-it was well established that Silent fetuses invariably withered and died under such conditions. And were they Silent children waiting to be born, or simple clumps of cells? Hundreds of years of debate hadn’t changed-or solved-the issue. In the end, Melthine ordered the embryos placed in storage until someone could come up with a solution he liked.
Ara decided to end the debate for at least one embryo.
“Do you want a daughter or a son?” asked the doctor on the day of implantation.
“Let the universe decide,” Ara replied, and grinned as the doctor dramatically covered his eyes with one hand and plucked a tube from the module. Nine months later, Benjamin Rymar was born, red hair, blue eyes, and all. Ara held him tight and whispered happy greetings in his tiny ear.
As time passed, Ara discovered motherhood wasn’t exactly what she had expected. In some ways it was more, and in other ways it was less. She exchanged field work for teaching and was surprised at how little she regretted it. There was laughing and singing, night feedings and toilet training, sleepovers and bullies. Ben’s speech developed late, as was expected of a Silent child, but Ben’s tenth birthday came and went, and Ben showed no awareness of the Dream, no ability to hear the little whispers from the minds that created it. A worried Ara ordered batteries of tests. The monks who conducted them, however, could only shake their heads. Genetically Ben was Silent, but some unknown factor of environment kept him from expressing that trait.
Guilt had weighed Ara down for months. Had she done something wrong while she was pregnant? Was it something she had done or said to him? In the end, she’d been forced to accept that there was no way to tell. For all she knew, it was a side-effect of being frozen as an embryo for so many years. She supposed that it didn’t really matter. Ara wouldn’t have traded Ben for a truly Silent child, nor would she have given him up. Not after she had fought so hard to have him in the first place.
So how could Vidya give her babies to the Unity? And would her history make her easier or harder to persuade? The memory of a crackling energy whip played across Ara’s mind, and she had the sinking feeling it would be harder.
CHAPTER NINE
PLANET RUST
The policeman and the terrorist are birthed from the same womb.
Kendi burst into the hotel lobby barely thirty seconds ahead of the guard. The desk clerk, a short man with a horsey face, looked up, startled.
“What room is the hustler in? The kid with blue eyes,” he snapped.
“Uh-”
“There’s a raid right behind me,” Kendi said. “What room?”
The clerk was already heading for the back door. “Room one-oh-two,” he called over his shoulder. Then he was gone.
Kendi dashed for the hallway. He had reached the door to the first room when the front door smashed open and armed guard poured into the lobby. “Everybody freeze!” one shouted. Kendi kept on moving.
Room 102 was only a few steps further up the hall. Without stopping, Kendi rammed his shoulder into the door. The cheap plastic gave with a crack like a gunshot. Kendi stumbled into the room. Inside, Sejal jumped away from the woman he had entered the hotel with. They were standing next to the sagging bed. The woman’s blouse was open, and she yanked it shut with an outraged screech.
“The guard’s right behind me,” Kendi gasped. “We have to get out!”
Without a word, Sejal rushed to the grimy window. It wasn’t made to open. Footsteps and shouts rumbled from the hallway.
“Who the hell are you?” the woman demanded. She was in her thirties, with brown hair and eyes. Kendi ignored her and snatched up a lamp, intending to smash the window with it.
“Freeze!”
Two guards framed the shattered doorway, one leveling a pistol, the other pointing a camera. It flashed just as Kendi flung the lamp at them. The guard fired just as the lamp struck his arm. Energy cracked through the air and burned a hole in the wall. The smell of burnt aerogel filled the room. Sejal didn’t move. The guard with the camera abruptly balled up a fist and socked his partner on the jaw. With a startled grunt, the man went down. The woman screamed again.
Still operating on autopilot, Kendi kicked the window as hard as he could. The tough plastic cracked. One more kick and it shattered. Sejal dove out of the room. Kendi followed. If the woman wanted to follow suit, that was her business. Kendi refused to worry about her.
The alley behind the hotel was dark and smelly. Kendi wondered if every alley in the Unity was the same as he and Sejal scrambled to their feet and sprinted for all they were worth. They emerged from the alley and threaded their way through the market crowd. After a few meters, Kendi grabbed Sejal’s shirt.
“Slow down,” he hissed.
Sejal obeyed, and the crowd obligingly closed around them. Without hurrying or looking back, Kendi strode briskly up the street, towing Sejal with him. After he was sure they weren’t being followed, he hauled Sejal into a restaurant and sat him down in a booth.
“Hey!” Sejal growled. “Just who the hell do you think-”
“I think,” Kendi growled back, “that I saved your ass. Twice. And I think that means you owe me some of your precious time. Or do you want to complain to the guard?”
Sejal said nothing.
“All right.” Kendi settled back into his chair, trying to get his pounding heart back under control and folding his arms across his chest so his hands wouldn’t shake. He had acted purely on impulse, and only now were the possible consequences catching up with him. If he had been caught, he’d have been thrown back into Unity prison. The memory of a writhing figure and a muffled scream flashed through his mind, and he shoved them away.
“So what do you want?” Sejal asked warily.
“A beer,” Kendi muttered, and punched up the table’s menu. He ordered the first alcoholic beverage that appeared under his fingertips, and sweetened kelp juice for Sejal. “Look, Sejal-”
“How do you know my name?”
“We talked to your mother.”
Sejal leaned across the table. “You stay the hell away from my mother,” he hissed. “Lay one finger on her and I’ll cut off your-”
