“Hah!” I boomed, clapping my big hands together. “Damn, you had us so worried. Natasha? That’s great news! She’s a genius, honey. She could have been your momma six times over anyway.”
Etta looked kind of stunned. She knew Natasha and liked her, but… to suddenly become blood-related, well, that had to be a shock.
“Let’s never tell her,” Etta said. “She’s innocent in this. I assume that she didn’t donate her genes voluntarily?”
The old man shook his head.
“All right then… I’m trying to come to grips with this. To control my emotions… Daddy, I want to go home to Earth.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of here.”
I nodded, and gave her a hug. She didn’t want any hugs from Floramel or her grandpa. She didn’t even want to look at them. She just wanted to leave.
Deciding that might be for the best, I took her with me. We talked to the hogs at the gateway posts in town, and after a bit of wrangling they let us through.
I knew what the trouble was, but I didn’t tell Etta. She didn’t match her ID. I think the hogs figured I was smuggling a local girl to Earth using a false tapper—but they didn’t outright accuse me of it. Probably it was my rank in Legion Varus that got them to let us slide by.
Back on Earth, Etta was sullen. She told me she wanted to go down to the labs to check up on things.
“Uh… maybe we should touch you up a bit, first,” I suggested.
She looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, um, don’t you have some make-up, or something? Maybe some platform shoes would be nice.”
She looked at me in horror. She put her hands up to her new pretty, softened face. “My face… the recognition software… they’ll never let me in!”
“It’s okay, I’m sure we can reregister or something. We’ll tell everyone you got a face-job.”
Etta went into a bathroom, and she didn’t come out. After a while, I went in after her. She was staring into a mirror.
“Hey, honey. Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not me. I’m never going to be okay.”
“That’s just a bad death talking. Varus people live this way all the time. You’ll have to toughen-up girl. You used to want to be in the legions, remember?”
“Yes… and I was out of my mind. Dad… this is serious. The ID tests down low in Central go way past photographic recognition. My DNA has changed. My biometrics have changed. I won’t be allowed within a hundred floors of my own office.”
I thought about that, and I realized she was right. “Oh… so… what are we going to do?”
She thought about it for a time, and at last, she had an answer. “Let’s go back home. To Georgia. Take me home, Dad.”
So, we took the sky-train down to Georgia. I was sick over my little girl, but I talked big the whole way home. Only a practiced ear that was very accustomed to my particular brand of bullshit would have detected my true state of mind.
My folks were overjoyed to see us. I told them in a private moment that Etta had gotten into some new beauty face-sculpting, and they bought that. They were worried—but they didn’t know their granddaughter was about twenty percent stranger now.
Etta seemed to settle in nicely. Her grandparents were accepting, and everything was familiar and comforting. She turned over every mirror in the house, and we pretended not to notice.
On about the third evening, when the sun was traveling low over the swamp, I saw an aircar. The flight lights were blinking above the trees.
Aircars were still rare in Waycross, but they weren’t unknown. It wasn’t until I saw the thing bank and glide down out of the sky for a landing that I became curious.
A lone figure climbed out while I watched from behind a tree. She was small and well-built. Frowning, I let her walk up to my porch and knock on my shack door.
For the first three knocks, I didn’t move. I didn’t know how I felt. Galina and I had been through a lot together—but I wasn’t happy about being sold to the Skay.
Finally, she gave up on my shack, and she turned toward the main house.
“Are you shitting me…?” I muttered.
But it was true. She had the all-out gall to head toward my parents’ backdoor. I couldn’t believe it, having figured she’d get back in her car and leave when I didn’t come to the door.
Doubtlessly, she’d been buzzing my tapper for days, but I’d already covered it all up with aluminum foil and tape. I didn’t want any forced calls from Central. They were all total bastards, to my way of thinking.
“Hey!” I shouted, walking after her. I didn’t want her to disturb my folks, or Etta, who was not in a good state of mind. “Galina!”
She turned and stared. After a moment, she approached me slowly. “James?”
When I got close, I got even more pissed, because I saw the new rank symbols on her shoulders.
“They made you an imperator again?” I asked.
“Yes. It took a long time, didn’t it?”
We stared at each other for a few moments. Neither one of us seemed to know what to say. But anger got the better of me.
“A promotion. That was the deal, wasn’t it? The payoff for selling me to the Skay?”
“No, James. It wasn’t like that.”
She was lying. I could feel it. She wasn’t as good at lying as I was. She had some talent, but it just wasn’t at the professional level.
“Look,” she said after I glared at her for a while. “I’m very glad you managed
