Offspring (54 page)

Harenn put a hand to her mouth. “Oh.”

“Gretchen,” Lucia whispered, and grabbed automatically for the Irfan figurine she no longer wore around her neck. “What do we do?”

Ched-Theree rose. “I must report this to my superiors. If any of you remember anything, even the tiniest detail, contact me immediately. We have less than fourteen hours to find that ship.”

Kendi stared at the blackened, creaking timbers that had been his and Ben’s home. A wilting bouquet of blueflowers and a paper picture of a Ched-Balaar Kendi didn’t know fluttered in the breeze, offerings left behind by die-hard Offspring idolizers. Slowly, carefully, testing every step, he picked his way across the surviving drawbridge and into the mess. It was like walking into a giant skeleton. Charcoal crunched underfoot, and the place smelled faintly of burned wood. Kendi figured he was standing in the living room, but it was hard to be sure. Work crews had removed all the salvageable possessions to the new house, and souvenir hunters had cleared out a lot of the loose pieces. How many chunks of charred wood hung on walls or sat on altars around Treetown now? “This piece belonged to the Offspring’s house,” says a proud owner. “It cured my daughter of her cold.”

I came here to get something.

Kendi took a moment to orient himself. This was the entryway, which meant the living room was over that way and Ben’s office was over there. Ara used to use that room for meditation and entering the Dream.

Moving as if he himself were in a dream, Kendi crunched over creaking, screeching floorboards. Part of the office wall had collapsed and burned, but Kendi easily found a particular spot on the floor and knelt there. Clumsily, he pulled aside a concealed section of flooring to reveal a safe hidden beneath.

Closure, maybe. I don’t know.

Kendi stared at the locked safe. A little over a year ago—and how long ago that seemed—Empress Kan maja Kalii of the Independence Confederation had given Mother Adept Araceil Rymar an order: determine if Sejal were a threat to the millions of lives that made up the Confederation. If, in Ara’s judgment, Sejal posed a danger, Ara was to kill him.

Kendi had never learned what decision Ara had come to. Padric Sufur had spirited Sejal away, and then the Despair had struck, and Ara had leaped from a balcony. Sometimes, though, Kendi was sure that Ara had decided to kill Sejal, and the feelings of guilt that followed this decision—unfulfilled or not—had worsened the Despair for her, causing her to commit suicide. At other times, Kendi was positive Ara would never have tried to take an innocent life, that she had simply fallen victim to the Despair on her own, as so many other Silent had done. He would never know for sure.

A little gust of wind stirred the talltree leaves, and one or two drifted down to land beside Kendi. The safe had been Ara’s, then Ben’s, then Ben and Kendi’s, and it appeared to have remained untouched by the explosion. In all the fuss and bother, he had completely forgotten about it and the weapons it contained—a needler and a neuro-pistol. He pressed his thumb to the plate, let it scan his retina, and recited a password for voice recognition. The door popped open and Kendi looked inside.

The safe contained a needler and a box of ammunition. The neuro-pistol was gone.

Kendi’s chest filled with ice. Slowly, carefully he closed the safe and stood on shaky legs. It wasn’t true. It
couldn’t
be true. Ben didn’t—Ben couldn’t—

A tiny sound caught his attention. He spun. Ben was standing a few paces away. The spring breeze tousled his red hair and brought the smell of charred wood. Kendi didn’t move. Ben stared at Kendi with hard blue eyes, then turned and walked away, leaving Kendi standing in the wreck that had been their home.

“It’s hard to fight in silence.”

—Irfan Qasad

“Where the
hell
have you been?” Tan demanded as Kendi entered Salman’s living room. “I’ve got ten people out looking for you.”

“Where’s Ben?” Kendi interrupted. “Did he come back yet?”

“He went upstairs before we could finish bawling him out, love,” Salman said from her place on the couch. “I’ve been talking to Ched-Theree, and we have the military—what’s left of it—sweeping the system for that ship, but it’s like finding a single leaf on an entire talltree.”

“We’ve got barely two hours before that signal has to go out,” Tan growled, “and you and Ben decide to disappear for—”

But Kendi was already heading up the stairs. The door to his and Ben’s room was closed. Kendi stood outside for a long moment, then firmed his jaw and entered.

Ben sat in a chair by the window, caught in fading amber sunlight. Both Ara and Evan lay asleep in the exact center of the bed. The windows were all shut and the room felt stuffy. Kendi quietly shut the door.

“Let me tell you what you were thinking,” Ben said without looking at him. “You were thinking about how much I hate Sufur and how you found me in the ruins of the house not long before he was murdered. You were thinking that since I set up the cameras around Sufur’s house, I could easily take them off-line. You were thinking that I slipped out during Grandma’s party, broke into Sufur’s house, and killed him with Mom’s neuro-pistol. Or maybe I just killed him when I went to his house with Lucia. That would be why I told her to wait outside. You were thinking I’m one of the few people whose hands don’t shake after firing a neuro-pistol set to kill.” He finally turned and faced Kendi. “You were thinking I broke my promise and that I killed a slimy, disgusting creature who deserved to die.”

“Ben, I’m sorry,” Kendi said. “I’m so sorry. But I had to know if the pistol was still there, and—”

It was the wrong thing to say. Ben’s face set into a mask of stone and he walked out of the room. Kendi stood there, filled with wretched uncertainty. “ll the clues pointed in Ben’s direction, but Kendi didn’t want to believe that Ben would break a promise and lie to him. He caught up with Ben in their room and grabbed Ben's hand.

“Tell me you didn’t kill Sufur and I’ll believe you,” he said.

“So you have to ask,” Ben said.

“Ben—”

“I. Didn’t. Kill. Him. Is that enough?”

Kendi nodded. “I believe you.”

“Fine.” But it clearly wasn’t.

Long pause. “They still have Gretchen and all those other people,” Kendi said. “We need to find that satellite and that ship.”

“Yeah?” The hostility in Ben’s voice remained. “How the hell are we going to do that?”

And Kendi lost it. “ll the weeks and months of being careful around Ben, of holding his tongue for fear of making Ben shut down, of being so careful and patient and understanding every moment—all of it smashed out into the open and rushed at Ben.

“You know what, Ben?” he snarled. “I’m really sick of this. I’m sick of the way you pick fights without picking fights, I’m sick of walking on eggshells around you, and I’m
goddammed
sick of solving all the problems around here.” His voice rose and he made no attempt to hold it down. “Who got our kids back?
Me
. Who figured out it who was trying to kill us?
Me
. Who caught on to Petrie’s plot?
Me
. Who negotiated the game contract?
Me
. So who has to find Gretchen before Sufur’s lackeys vacuum-dry her corpse? Apparently
me
. No one seems to have a fucking clue about what to do, but that’s okay—good old Kendi will pull a trick out of his ass, don’t you worry. Hell, no one even has to say
thank you
.” Kendi was shouting now, his face contorted. “I’m sick of playing hero and I’m sick of playing the detective and I’m sick of the people who are supposed to be helping me always needing
me
to help
them
. For months I’ve been watching what I say and what I do around you, and you
still
get pissed at me. So maybe I should stop watching what I say. Or maybe I should just—just—”

And there he stopped. Some things shouldn’t be said, even in the middle of white-hot anger. Ben’s face had turned to stone. Every muscle in his neck and jaw stood outlined in stark, pale flesh. Kendi spun around, gulping in great breaths and trying to regain control. He heard Evan crying in the nursery up the hall, but for once he ignored the sound. Harenn or Lucia could handle it.

After several moments, Kendi’s heart slowed and he no longer felt like he was going to explode. Behind him, Ben hadn’t said a word. Kendi turned around. He hadn’t stirred from the chair. Of course he hadn’t. Kendi fought the urge to grind his teeth.

“Gretchen,” he said finally. “We have to find Gretchen. And I do have an idea.”

Ben’s only response was to relax his jaw. Kendi sat on the bed a fair distance away from him. “You said you called up both the logarithmic code and the coordinates for the ship and the satellite on Sufur’s computer, right?”

“Right,” Ben said shortly.

“That means you at least
saw
them, and
that
means the information is still somewhere in your head. “ll we have to do is find it.”

“And how will we do that?”

The tension between them was so thick, it was almost visible, like a dirty fog hanging in the air. Kendi plunged on.

“You’re not a Child of Irfan, so you didn’t get the full mnemonic training at the monastery, but you’ve had the basics,” he said. “Enough to do independent contract work. Your short-term recall is good enough to let you run letters and basic documents to other planets, but you’re not certified to handle complex stuff like bank transfers and computer codes.”

“Where is this going, Kendi?” Ben said impatiently. “I know what my limitations in the Dream are.”

“The point is that we have a basis for getting those codes back,” Kendi said. “For most Silent, including me, the information we transmit through the Dream fades within a day. We read it in the solid world, hit the Dream, relay it to another Silent, and forget it. If you were a fully-trained Child, you could simply recite what you saw on the screen because your short-term memory wouldn’t have let go yet. But you aren’t fully trained.”

“Meaning the information is gone.”

“Meaning we just have to dig for it. In the Dream.”

“It won’t work.”

“We have to
try
, Ben. Unless you have a better idea.”

Ben shot him a hard look, then shrugged. “All right. We can try. Meet me on my turf.” He produced a dermospray from the dresser and all but flung himself down on the bed. Kendi retrieved his spear and his own dermospray. Ben injected himself and shut his eyes without giving Kendi another glance. Kendi’s temper rose again and he found it hard to relax, even with the drug’s help. He lost track of time, and it was quite a while before he found himself gliding on falcon wings through hot desert air. Far below lay the Outback. Kendi caught an updraft and cast out his mind. It took only three seconds to find Ben, and one second to sense the anger in his mind. Kendi’s own temper rose in response. A dust devil whirled into existence beneath him, and Kendi beat his wings quickly to avoid it. Stupid. Thought became reality in the Dream, and unfocused anger took...unhealthy forms.

Outback sand butted up against a hard tile floor. Kendi glided along the boundary and reached out to Ben’s mind.
~May I approach?~

~You may.~
Ben’s mental voice was flat.

Kendi crossed the border and swooped downward. A ceiling faded into existence over him and he reflexively dropped lower still. Ben stood in the center of an enormous room filled with electronic equipment. Organic data processing units wound up toward the ceiling, twisting in green-blue spirals. Data scrolled across holographic displays arranged neatly on shiny steel counters. Magnetic fields pulsed, lights flashed, metal gleamed. Transmission lines and data portals gaped in all directions, transmitting and receiving data at impossible speeds. Kendi dropped to the floor next to him and took the shape of a kangaroo.

“Let’s get this started,” Ben said. “I checked the time and we have fifty-three minutes to transmit Sufur’s code.”

“Right.” Kendi leaned back on his tail. “I decided to try this here in the Dream because you’re already in a trance when you’re here. We just need to push you a little deeper and you should be able to come up with what we need.”

“Fine. What’s the first step?”

“I’m new to this, too,” Kendi said, trying to keep his temper from rising again. Ben wasn’t being helpful. It was almost as if he
wanted
to fail. “I think you should try sitting down.”

Ben raised a hand over the floor. The tiles softened and moved like warm clay, and a lounge chair rose out of them. It solidified with a noise like someone clenching a fistful of mud. Ben sat in the chair and it reclined back so he was looking up at the ceiling.

“Close your eyes and relax,” Kendi instructed. “Breathe deep and even...deep and even...your legs are relaxed...very relaxed...your torso is—”

“I don’t need a lesson in relaxation, Kendi,” Ben interrupted.

“All right,” Kendi said through clenched teeth. “Why don’t you relax yourself and then raise a hand when you’re ready.”