Aftermath (19 page)

The Pretty Robotics receptionist asks, “How may I help you today?”

I’ve no doubt I ought to have an appointment, but maybe connections will help. “Could you tell Dr. Carvati that Sirantha Jax is here to see him? I have news about Dr. Solaith.”

Her face shapes the facsimile of a smile. “I will pass along the message. Please have a seat and avail yourself of the entertainment package on the vid. Shall I order refreshments?”

“No, thank you.”

No more than a quarter hour passes before Carvati joins me. He’s a slim, silver-haired man with a smoothly cultured voice and an artificial tan. Yet one cannot help but like him, though he’s the consummate illusionist. From what I gather, he attended school with Doc, and they remained friends.

“How is Saul?” he asks, ushering me back to a private consultation room.

Sickness roils in my stomach, but I cannot dance around these tidings. I wait until the door swishes shut before replying. “He died as a hero during the bombardment of Venice Minor. I’m sorry.”

Carvati’s smile fades, his color dropping beneath the warm, false hue. “No. Saul wouldn’t have fought. That can’t be right.”

“He was a noncombatant,” I agree. “Providing medical support to the troops.”

I’ve no idea what he was doing on the ground, but the truth is complicated and hard to explain. Better to let the matter rest like this. People prefer concrete answers, comprehensible reasons why, and I need to secure his support.

His hands tremble as he orders a drink. Carvati sits down at the conference table, flattening his palms against the cool alloy surface as if that can assuage the loss. “Mortality packs a hell of a punch.” The bot brings the tray faster than I would’ve believed possible, and the room is silent as the doctor drains his glass. When he glances up at me, I see speculation. “You didn’t have to carry this news in person. Therefore, I collect you have some additional purpose.”

He’s smart. I decide not to stretch this out. Carvati is busy, and he has others to attend. Taking a seat across from him, I say, “I want to hire you.”

“Not for organ transplant or cosmetic procedures?” Those are his specialties, but this clinic does unbelievably advanced work. The organ transplant business is booming; Carvati can clone a healthy organ to replace a diseased one. And that’s significant, given what I want him to do.

“I have a small tissue sample . . . and I’d like to hire you for a clone job.”

“Not Saul?” His face reflects true horror.

“No. It’s a Mareq hatchling who died in my care. I would like to return the clone to his mother’s clutch. I’m not sure if she’ll think of him as her child, but I can’t return to make amends empty-handed.”

“Identical DNA creates the same individual,” Carvati says. “The only difference arises from nature versus nurture. So I think she’d be pleased to see him.”

I nod. That’s the prevailing school of thought on clones. They’re the same person, essentially, but if they’re raised in different environment, then disparity emerges. Since Baby-Z didn’t live long enough for anyone to get to know him, his personality is yet unformed, and his mother should be glad of his return. Cloning doesn’t make sense to replace a loved one because it’s a lengthy process with humans, so if I’d cloned Kai, I would’ve been old enough to be his mother by the time he reached maturity. Most people don’t go that route with lovers, though I’ve heard of a few wealthy families doing so to replace kids lost to misadventure. Science hasn’t shown much success with accelerated development; the Breed experiments were an expensive disaster with only a handful of viable subjects.

“A Mareq hatchling would be fairly simple,” he goes on, thoughtful.

“Will you do it?”

He makes up his mind quickly. “Certainly. It will pose no problem for my labs, though you’ll need to take great care with a Mareq so young.”

“I’m familiar with their needs. If you could also synthesize a protein mixture, I’d be grateful.” I’ll be wearing Baby-Z, mark two, all by myself this time. A little pang goes through me at the memory of March with the hatchling on his chest.

He pushes to his feet. “Thank you for telling me about Saul in person. Was there anything else?”

“Actually,” I say, “there is. I have some notes here on Doc’s last project. It would mean everything to me to see the work completed.”

“What was it?” Carvati is wary, but interested.

“Devising a cure for the La’heng.”

He whistles low. “That’s a tall order. They need a treatment that counteracts the prior damage to brain chemistry without creating any new side effects.”

“I know. And that’s tough because of their hyperadaptive physiology. I’d like you to assemble a team, the best people you can find. I’ll pay . . . Price is no object.” Vel told me he’d help foot the bill for this endeavor, even if the civil suits deplete my fortune entirely. He said it’s a worthy goal—and I couldn’t agree more.

Carvati offers a half smile. “I intended to pass until you spoke that last sentence. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Excellent. Now, for the third and final order of business, I’d like to schedule an elective surgery.”

He sweeps me from head to toe with an assessing glance, as if he can predict what I want. “Breast work?”

I flush. “No. I want a vocalizer installed that will permit me to articulate in nonhuman languages.”

“Like Ithtorian and Mareq,” he guesses.

There’s a reason he gets the big bucks.

“Precisely.”

“Speak to the receptionist. For obvious reasons, I can’t take walk-ins for nonvital procedures, not even if you came by way of Saul. Tell her you’re a priority one patient, though, so she doesn’t make you wait months.”

“Understood.”

Out in the foyer, I convey the message and receive an appointment for next week. Then the Pretty Robotics model summons a vehicle for me, and I step onto the platform to wait. There is no view like this anywhere in Gehenna, so close to the dome, with the world spread out below like a miniscule model. And somewhere in this blood orange glow, Vel is alone and grieving.

Since I don’t know where to find Vel, I return to Adele’s
and walk up the flights to her flat. Her door recognizes me, after all this time, and I’m touched anew by her kindness. I remember how I used to come down from the garret to use her san-shower, and we’d eat breakfast together. That was a long time ago, before everything changed, even before Farwan’s fall.

I come into the sitting room where we left her . . . and find her quiet in her chair. Her eyes are closed. I tell myself that she’s sleeping; any second she will open them and greet me and offer me some tea. But even after I reach her side and touch her arm, she remains motionless. Her skin is warm, but not the heat of a living person anymore, more that energy that lingers long into the night on a sun-warmed walkway. Once the stored warmth drains away, there will be no more. I touch my fingertips to her wrist, then her throat, just to be sure. There’s no doubt.

Adele is gone.

This is not the first time I’ve been confronted with death. NBS leaves a very quiet corpse, who happens to be capable of breathing. If that jumper has any true loved ones, then they do a merciful injection and handle the details. Though Adele only needs the latter, not the former, that’s the least I can do for her, this woman who was like a mother to me while I lived on Gehenna.

I drop to my knees, but no tears come. This feels more like a pilgrimage than true grief. If anyone can find immortality, it is Adele. Perhaps she has gone, now, to Mary’s arms or into the great Iglogth. There are mysteries whose answers we can never know, until our time comes to tread that road behind those we loved. An ache springs up in my throat, but I push it back.

“You would’ve left instructions,” I say aloud, through the clot of sadness.

It’s impossible that she, with her whispers of foretelling, didn’t see this coming. So I search her apartment and find a new message on the console. I sit down, elbows on my knees, and listen to her last wishes.

“Jax,” she says—and of course she knew it would be me, somehow, “you will play a daughter’s role at the end. I saw that when I first found you at Hidden Rue. Please notify Domina, as she was good to me. The dancers will want to come, too. I prefer a simple service and molecular dispersion afterward. It’s enough to know you will remember me. As for Vel, he’s going to take my death hard, and he’ll need you in days to come. Farewell, dear Sirantha.”

The vid ends then. I don’t realize I’m crying until the first warm tear splashes onto the back of my hand. Wiping my eyes, I activate the comm and enter the code for funeral services. A bot answers, the same one they use as receptionists and admin all over the galaxy, plain and efficient. Dr. Carvati has a similar model.

“Gehenna Mortality Center, how many I direct your call?”

I explain who Adele is and what she wanted, then the bot connects me to the correct party. Fortunately, she forwards my information, so I don’t have to repeat the explanation. A human answers this time, middle-aged, but well preserved thanks to targeted Rejuvenex treatments. He wears a patient, understanding look that grates on me straightaway, or maybe it’s his waxed eyebrows.

“I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. I’ll send a technician to assist you right away. If you could provide your direction?”

I do. The actual conversation doesn’t take long. He just needs some banking information to be sure I can afford his help. When he realizes who I am and whose fortune I inherited, his manner shifts toward the obsequious. Yeah, my instinctive antipathy was spot on . . . but then, it usually is. Thinking and planning may not be my strong suit, but I have reflex down to a fine art. He doesn’t care about the trial or what I’ve done; he only cares that I have a big bank balance. The mortality manager tries to sell me bells and whistles: a host of mourners to add consequence, a choir of angelic children, and a night black hovercar to convey us to the ceremony. Stubbornly, I refuse it all because Adele asked for simplicity, and I will do as she requested. He’s annoyed when he cuts the call.

The technicians come and go, removing the body with utmost discretion, then they leave a bot to scrub away every last trace that someone died here. That seems wrong somehow, so soon, but I don’t protest. Better to have it done.

Hours pass as I use her contacts to notify people as she requested. By the time Vel returns, it’s nearly evening, though on Gehenna, the sky always looks the same. One can only mark passage of time by artificial means, by the way the seconds tick away. I’m standing at the window, gazing up at a tangerine dream of a sky, when I hear his steps outside. The door recognizes him, too, even after all these turns. That twists me up inside.

“Where is she?” he asks, but as I turn, I see he already knows.

He saw the whisper of death in her tired eyes and her sallow skin, the hands that trembled in her lap. And so he ran from it. He told me that was what he did best; he ran from Ithiss-Tor, and his life with Trapper permitted him to hunt as he ran. He only ever stayed once—with Adele—until she
told
him to go. I make up my mind, here and now, that I never will. That’s the one thing I’ll never ask him to do.

“At the center, being prepped.”

“There will be a ritual?”

I suppose he’s attended a few such services, Trapper and Smitty, at least. Before now, I never considered what it meant for him, living among us. He must be so tired of losing people, and yet he goes on. He does not return to his own people because he cannot. He is a changed being, not wholly Ithtorian in spirit, and their ways chafe him now.

“Yes, tomorrow. I handled all the arrangements according to the vid she left. Would you like to watch it?”

“No, I think not. When I see her like this, it is harder for me to remember her as she was, before.”

“That’s why she sent you away, you know. Not because she didn’t love you. Because she did.”

Vel stands so very still, but such pain lives in that stillness. “It should not be so sharp after all this time. I should have reached some acceptance.”

This is an area in which I have some experience. “I’d like to say you forget the pain, that it fades, and you only remember the sweet moments, but that would be a lie. Sometimes, with Kai, I go along without thinking of him for days or weeks at a time, then something sets it off—a smell, a man’s laugh—and then the knowledge drowns me. That he’s gone. I’ll never see or touch him again. And it is brand-new, all over again.”

“How do you bear it?”

“Because they’re worth it. So you ride out the rough days.”

“I . . . loved her, for all I said we do not bond as humans do. She taught me.”

“Love,” I correct gently. “And you always will.”

He turns away to gaze out her window, as he must’ve done with her at his side, so often before. And then he strides into her bedroom, which he might have shared, turns past. At first, I think there’s nothing here of him to speak of their time together, then he picks up a framed image. It’s not a simple still. This is Adele with a tall, thin, and average-looking man. Brown hair, brown eyes. Not special, except it’s Vel. It
is
. They’re at the market—she’s bright with joy—and some random art photographer has captured these ten seconds, where she gazes up at him, and then he leans down to rub his cheek against hers.

Adele knows, I realize. This was taken after he told her the truth, and so he’s offering affection in the Ithtorian way. And her reaction is . . . luminous. Vel watches that perfect moment loop endlessly. His claws tighten on the frame, and a small sound escapes him. Nothing I ever heard from him before, but I don’t need the chip to tell me it’s born of raw anguish.