Sanctuary side of the warren. “Your petitioner gives his name as Christopher McCutcheon and claims you as his mother,” she said. “But the indexes don’t support a blood relation. Did you have an unreported male child?”
“After a fashion,” said Deryn. “Where is he?”
“In 24. You can talk to him from the guide room—this way.”
“Thank you,” Deryn said. “I’ll see him in person.”
The guide flashed a grimace of distaste. “As you wish. We’ll monitor.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said, giving the woman’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “He is no danger to me.”
Beside the door to Shelter 24, a small screen showed Christopher sitting quietly near the far end of the compartment, keeping company with his thoughts. Deryn paused before the screen, trying to clear the image of him at fifteen from her mind and replace it with the image before her—a young man, but a man in full maturity.
The darkness cast in his features seemed now more of knowledge than of fear. The softness in his face had been chiseled down to something harder—and perhaps because of it, he was a measure more handsome in flower than she had expected. His spark of alertness was as bright as ever, even in repose. But the joyful innocence was missing, or hidden behind the mask of—what? Sadness? Behind the mask of the purpose that had brought him there.
He looked up as she entered, and his eyes seemed to brighten when he saw her. Showing an uncertain smile, he rose from the seat. He tried to say “Hello,” but the word came out as a noise lost deep in his throat.
Smiling back, Deryn opened her arms, and he came to her. He was the taller by nearly ten centimeters, but he let himself be small in her embrace. There were no words, but something words could not have captured passed between them. She felt great turmoil, great pain, and great relief swirling inside him.
“You always did give the best hugs,” she said, drawing back a step at last.
“I’ve missed you.”
“My memories of you are full of love,” she said. “Why did you come, Christopher?”
He seemed disconcerted by her directness. “Do you follow the news from Earth?”
“No,” she said. “I find it’s never about me.”
“Consider yourself lucky, then,” he said, but did not elaborate. “Deryn, my father’s dead.”
Deryn heard the news with both surprise and understanding. The surprise was the strength of the wave of regret and loss. She was caught for a moment in a time and a place she had renounced, and the breath she drew to quiet her center was quavery.
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing the hand she had never released. “Will you tell me about it?”
“I have to,” he said.
They perched on the edge of the settee-bed, and he began, marrying fact and supposition in his narrative. The story he told went further than Deryn could have guessed, and its quiet drama and horror awakened her protectiveness.
But Deryn kept that emotion contained. A father’s death and a son’s grief, however immediate at that moment in that room, were dwarfed by the other dimensions of the account. Deryn began to hope the Shelter guide had ignored her wishes and monitored the conversation, for there were parts of it that Anna X would need to hear.
She tried to listen as though she did not know him, to hear him as Anna would. But Deryn could not forget whom she was listening to, and wondered at how the child she had borne—this child of such promise, now a man of such paradox—had become a witness and a victim and now a player in such a tale.
Toward the end, Christopher became careful about his words. Deryn understood that he was not yet ready to ask what he had come to ask of her, that he was not yet sure of her. But she was ready to be asked, and gently stole the torch from him when the chance came.
“You’re here to do more than tell me William is dead.”
He nodded. “I thought you should know. But that isn’t the whole of it.”
“And the rest is—”
“I came here to find out what you can tell me about Sharron.”
She cocked her head and studied him. “And?”
“And what your geneticists can tell me about myself. I’ll pay for information, people’s time, any testing— whatever.”
“The first I can understand, though you may be disappointed,” she said. “But why do you think that anyone here can answer questions about the Chi Sequence?”
“Because you’re conceiving children here with one parent,” Christopher said. “And it’s a good bet that parthenogenesis requires more than a casual acquaintance with human genetics. If you want to deny it—or you’re obliged to deny it—I guess I understand that. If you really don’t know, I guess someone’ll come bursting in here any moment to stop you from finding out. But let me tell you what
“I remember the rumors and the jokes. You won’t need to repeat them for my benefit.”
“This is more than rumor,” said Christopher. “This is a matter of record. Angela O called for parthenogenetic research in her Womyn’s Manifesto long before there were any satlands. The year before this station was completed, the Sanctuary Committee—of which Angela O was a member—purchased a copy of the complete data base of the Human Genome Project.
“Four of the five geneticists given grants by the Free Womyn’s Guild to work on problems in parthenogenesis stopped publishing, even privately, after Sanctuary opened. Two came up here openly, with the first wave. It’s a safe bet that the other two came here as well. On top of that, you’ve admitted at least eighteen first-rank geneticists in the last twenty years, including one who was with the Project in Munich for a time.” He shook his head. “If you don’t already know about the Chi Sequence, you at least have the tools to find out.”
“Why does it matter, Christopher?”
He stared at her uncomprehendingly, and she saw in that moment the part of him that had not yet grown. “I have to know who I am. I have to know what to be.”
“No geneticist can tell you,” she said.
“I don’t think you understand how deep this runs,” he said. “It’s the difference between a pointless life and a life with purpose.”
“Who’s judging, Christopher?”
“I am.”
But he was not, she knew. He was looking for a new Authority, a new compass. He did not know how bright was his own fire. He did not trust his own wisdom.
“I know how deep it runs,” Deryn said. “I saw your father crush your confidence a hundred times by withholding his approval, by telling you how you could do better instead of how well you’d done. I remember when you were five and spent an entire afternoon creating what you called a movie—a poster covered with a dozen crayon drawings, complete with titles and credits. You were so proud. I hung it on the kitchen wall.”
“I remember,” Christopher said.
“Do you remember that when William came home, he took it down and told you to put it in your room? That he ripped off a corner in the process, and how you started to cry? That I found your ‘movie’ that night in a corner of your room, torn into pieces and crushed into a ball? That runs deep, too, Christopher.”
His face, sulky and defensive, told her that resistance had set in. “I know about my father. I need to know about me.”
She shook her head. “But you’re asking the wrong question. It isn’t who you are. It’s who you want to be.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out—who I am at the root. What my part is. What I got from Sharron.”
“What will you do with that knowledge if you get it?”
“Then I’ll know what it will take to make me happy.” He said it with more hope than confidence.
“Will you?” There was more she wanted to say, but he had stopped listening. He so feared the responsibility of choosing for himself—so feared being wrong—he could not hear the inner voice. And that voice mattered far more than hers.
“I never told you about when I met your father,” she said at last.
“Yes, you did.” He looked puzzled. “How you heard about what he was doing from the doctor in Tacoma—and
