The Shadow of Saganami

Once again, his perceptiveness surprised her. She considered him for a few seconds, then shook her head.

'No. I'm talking about something that happened years ago, back on Old Earth.'

'When the Scrags kidnapped you?'

'You knew about that?' She blinked, and he actually chuckled.

'The story got pretty good coverage in the 'faxes,' he pointed out. 'Especially with the Manpower connection. And I had reasons of my own for following the stories.' Again something flickered deep in his eyes. Then he smiled. 'And neither your father nor Lady Montaigne have been particularly... inconspicuous since you came home.' His expression sobered. 'I've always figured the newsies didn't get the whole story, but the part they did get was bloody enough. It must've been pretty bad for a kid-what, fourteen T-years old?'

'Yeah, but that wasn't what I meant.' He raised both eyebrows, and she twitched her shoulders uncomfortably, unable to believe she was about to tell Paulo d'Arezzo, of all people, something she'd never even told Aikawa or Ragnhild. She drew a deep breath. 'Before Daddy and... the others found me, and Berry and Lars, there were three men. They'd grabbed Berry and Lars before I came along. They'd raped Berry and beaten her- badly. They were going to kill her, probably pretty soon, I think. But I didn't know that when they came after me .'

He was staring at her now, his eyes wide, and she drew another breath.

'I was already pretty good at the Neue-Stil ,' she said flatly. 'I was scared-I'd just gotten away from the Scrags, and I'd known they were going to kill me if I didn't make a break. I had all the adrenaline in the galaxy pumping through me, and nobody was going to make me go back. So when these three came at me in the dark, I killed them.'

'You killed them,' he repeated.

'Yes.' She met his eyes steadily. 'All three of them. Broke their necks. I can still feel the bones snapping. And I felt nauseated, and sick, and wondered what kind of monster I was. The nausea comes back to me, sometimes. But I remember I'm still here, still alive. And that Berry and Lars are still alive. And I tell you this completely honestly, Paulo-I may feel nauseated, and I may wish it had never happened, but I don't feel guilty and I do feel... triumphant. I can look myself in the eye and tell myself I did what had to be done, without waffling, and that I'd do it again. And I think that's the question you have to ask yourself about Anhur . You've already said you'd do the same thing again if you had to. Doesn't that mean it's what has to be done? What you have to do to be you ? And if that's true, why should you feel guilty?'

He looked at her silently for several seconds, then nodded slowly.

'I'm not sure there isn't a gaping hole in your logic, but that doesn't make you wrong. I'll have to think about it.'

'Oh, yeah,' she agreed with a wry smile. 'You have to think about it, Paulo. A lot. I sure as hell did! And don't think for a minute I'm not having a few bad moments over what happened to Anhur . You'd have to be psycho not to. Just don't get all bent out of shape trying to take the blood guilt of the universe onto your shoulders.'

'That's, ah, a... profound bit of advice.'

'I know,' she said cheerfully. 'I'm paraphrasing what Master Tye told me after Old Chicago. He's a lot more profound than I am. 'Course most people are more profound than me, when you come down to it.'

'Don't sell yourself too short.'

'Sure, sure.' She waved one hand in a dismissive gesture, and he shook his head with what might have been the first completely open smile she'd ever seen from him. It transformed his usual, detached expression into something totally different, and she cocked her head.

'Look,' she said, feeling a returning edge of awkwardness but refusing to let it deter her, 'this may not be any of my business. But why is it that you, well... keep to yourself so much?'

'I don't,' he said, instantly, smile disappearing, and it was her turn to shake her head.

'Oh, yes, you do. And I'm beginning to realize I was even slower than usual not to realize it isn't for the reasons I thought it was.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he said stiffly.

'I'm talking about the fact that it isn't because you think you're so much better than everyone else, after all.'

'Because I think what? ' He stared at her in such obvious consternation she had to chuckle.

'Well, that was my first thought. And I can be kind of mentally lazy sometimes. Somehow I never managed to get beyond thought number one to number two or number three.' She shrugged. 'I see somebody who's obviously spent that much money on bio-sculpt, and I automatically assume they have to have a pretty high opinion of themselves.'

'Biosculpt?' He was still staring at her, and, abruptly, he laughed. It was not a cheerful sound, and he grimaced as he touched his face. ' Biosculpt? You think that's what this is?'

'Well, yeah,' she said, a bit defensively. 'You're going to try to tell me it's not?'

'No,' he said. 'It's not biosculpt. It's genetics.'

'You're kidding me!' She eyed him skeptically. 'People don't come down the chute looking that good without a little help, Mr. d'Arezzo!'

'I didn't say it was natural genetics,' he said, his deep, musical voice suddenly so harsh that she sat bolt upright. His eyes met hers, and the cool gray was no longer cool. It was hot, like molten quartz. And then, suddenly, shockingly, he stuck out his tongue at her.

It was a gesture she'd seen before-seen from 'terrorists' like Jeremy X and scholars like Web Du Havel. But she'd never seen the genetic bar code of a genetically engineered slave on the tongue of a fellow Naval officer. He showed it to her for perhaps five seconds, then closed his mouth, gray eyes still blazing.

'If you think I'm good-looking,' Paulo said bitterly, 'you should have seen my mother. I never did-or not that I remember, anyway. She died when I was less than a year old. But my father's described her to me often enough. He had to describe her because he couldn't show me-Manpower doesn't let its slaves have pictures of each other.'

Helen stared at him, and he stared back defiantly, almost hostilely.

'I didn't know,' she said finally, softly.

'No reason you should've.' He drew a deep breath and looked away, taut shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. 'It's... not something I like to talk about. And,' he looked back at her, 'it's not as if I remember ever being a slave. Dad does, and sometimes it eats at him. And the fact that he and I-and my mother-were specifically designed to be attractive because that's what 'pleasure slaves' are supposed to be, that does eat at me sometimes. But he's never forgotten it was the Navy that intercepted the slaver we were on. My mother was killed in the process, but he never blamed the Navy, and neither did I. At least she died free , by God! That's why he took Captain d'Arezzo's name for our surname when he filed for citizenship. And why I joined the Navy.'

'I can see that,' she said, and deep inside she was kicking herself for not having recognized the signs. Surely someone who'd spent as much time with ex-slaves and the Anti-Slavery League as she had should have seen them. But why had he never dropped so much as a hint about it in her presence? He must have known Cathy Montaigne's adopted daughter would come as close to understanding as anyone who'd never been a slave could!

'Yeah,' he said, almost as if he'd been reading her mind. 'Yeah, I imagine you can see it, if anybody aboard the Kitty can. But it's not something I talk about. Not because I'm ashamed, really. But because... because talking about it takes away from me. It focuses on where I came from, the cold, sick 'businessmen' who built me and never even considered my parents or me human.'

He looked out the dome, his mouth twisted.

'I guess you can also understand why I'm not quite so impressed with my 'good looks' as other people are,' he said in a low, harsh voice. 'Sometimes it goes a lot further than that. When you know a bunch of twisted bastards designed you to look good-to be a nice, attractive piece of meat when they put you on the block or rented