Nobody’s Baby
I STEPPED INTO Flora and Anne’s kitchen and found myself witnessing a second very passionate kiss, in real life rather than on a screen.
Either Flora had leaned down to meet Anne, or Anne had hauled herself up to Flora’s level. Either way Anne’s hands were clenching the collar of Flora’s shirt, and Flora’s arms were tight around Anne’s waist, holding her up while her mouth made a very persuasive if wordless declaration.
Good for the girls, I thought, and coughed slightly.
They broke apart, and Anne brushed hastily at her mouth and looked up at Flora with hope like a tender spring shoot in her eyes.
Flora, shaken, biffed it. “I’m so sorry,” she blurted. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
I winced, unnoticed by either of them. On the list of things nobody wants to hear after a kiss, that was pretty much at the top.
Anne’s face passed from spring to winter with not a jot of summer on the way.
“Excuse me, Miss Gentleman,” she said, turning away from Flora.
“Our next show starts in twenty minutes, and somebody needs to take tickets.” And she strode out of the room with as much dignity as the situation would permit.
I turned to Flora, who was looking bewildered about the eyes and more than a little bruised about the lips. “You know, there’s such a thing as being too careful with someone’s feelings.”
Flora grimaced. “That’s not a problem I’m used to having.”
I expect not, I thought.
“But my usual habits won’t do for Anne at all,” Flora went on. “She’s only just moved out after three centuries of living with her son. She’s only just started to figure out how brilliant she is. How could I ask her to belong to me, when she’s only just learned to belong to herself?”
It was the same concern I’d read in Flora’s diary.
I almost pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to her—but something held me back.
Not everyone took well to being confronted with a secret second self, and I wanted a little more time to tease out the diary’s revelations before I let it out of my hands.
But there was one other question within my purview: “Would you like to know who the father is?”
“Not Jason Ipcar?” Flora said, her mouth going flat. “Because I broke it off with him. By note.”
“Not him,” I assured her.
She took a breath and nodded bravely.
“Hugh Renois.”
Surprise, and relief, and something softer. “I’m glad,” she said. “He’s very kind, is Hugh.”
“Please excuse my asking this, but…” I lowered my voice, though the thick curtains in the doorway would prevent anyone from overhearing unless they were very close.
“Would you be willing to make an appointment with Medical for an examination? To understand how you were able to conceive in the first place, and to make certain this doesn’t happen again.
It would make things easier all around—until your next embodiment, of course. ”
“Yes,” Flora said, with a pained kind of intensity.
“Yes, I agree it would. It’s not that I don’t want to become a parent, you see—eventually.
And it’s one thing to discover a pregnancy.
It’s quite another to be handed a living child and told you’re responsible.
I just—I just don’t feel it the same way at present, is all.
” She ducked her head, shame splashing red on her cheeks. “You understand?”
“Of course,” I replied. People liked to think they made choices based on reasons, but one thing I’d learned was that they made choices first, and came up with reasons after the fact.
Flora had had to make this choice twice, and chose differently each time.
It wasn’t a fault, merely a complication.
“Please let me know if any more trouble comes up.”
“I will,” she said, and then impulsively leaned forward and seized my hand. “You’ve been very good to us through all this mess, Miss Gentleman, and we appreciate it, Anne and I.”
The weight of that soft hand, the intimacy of her smile—yes, Flora Tilburn was one of nature’s born heartbreakers.
Good thing my heart wasn’t hers to be broken. I patted her wrist genially and made my escape.
My membership application was still pending, but Gaskill allowed me entrance to the Antikythera Club with a silent nod.
Alas, Ruthie and John had not taken the baby into the bar—I could have done with something stiff and sparkling—but into the cozy, cushioned warmth of the club library.
Velvet chairs waited with welcoming arms to receive readers, sturdy tables stood ready to support spread-out research materials, and small burnished lamps cast warm light over hardbacks and paperbacks alike.
Retromatting texts was nearly as difficult as retromatting clothing—but retromatting paper and platens and type from a set of instructions was entirely feasible, and several publishing companies currently flourished on the ship, as well as a dozen different newspapers and magazines.
I’d have guessed about half the books on these shelves had never been seen on Old Earth. Probably for the best, as the ideas Antikythera Club members tended to produce were the kind that were as beautiful and brilliant as lightning, and just as dangerous to try to grasp with a human hand.
Unless, it seemed, that hand was small and plump and belonged to the infant Peregrine, because the baby was currently at the center of an admiring circle of geniuses and being pampered like a very small, very smug Louis XIV.
A particle physicist held out one digit to be grasped by tiny baby fingers, and the Fairweather’s greatest astronomer was currently waggling her glasses up and down to make Peregrine giggle at the way they caught the light.
Several people were whispering questions to Ruthie, and I misliked the way they were taking such careful notes.
As if the baby were an object of study, a stunning scientific theory, or a newly engineered weapon, rather than a small fragile person unable to defend himself.
I found a seat near where John sat sprawled in an armchair, his hands wrapped around something with wreaths of steam. “Any news?” he asked.
“Some,” I conceded. “And I have an ethical dilemma to put to you.”
“It would be nice to use my brain for something other than internal screaming,” John said with a glance at the baby and his court of scientists.
Ruthie had produced a bottle and they were all avidly watching the baby eat, nestled in the crook of my nephew’s arm, Ruthie proud and fond as any new parent.
“It seems,” I said, “that Flora had stopped updating her memory-book, so as to keep Peregrine’s existence a secret from Ferry.”
“That girl watches too many flickers,” John muttered.
I pulled the diary from my pocket and set it on the short table between us. “But she did not entirely give up recording her memories. She only switched mediums. And there’s a lot in here that I don’t think she’d want other people to see.”
“Not a problem for a detective,” John said wryly.
“Thankfully not,” I answered cheerfully. “But here’s my dilemma: When all the detecting is done, and the various threads of this case have been unbraided, should I give Flora her diary back? I mean, would it be a gift or a burden?”
John considered. “Is it not hers by right?”
“In one sense. In another sense it belongs to a woman who’s gone.
Someone who once existed, and now does not.
” I tucked one leg under me and leaned forward.
“You heard her say she felt like it had happened to someone else. It sounded a little traumatic. I’m not at all interested in traumatizing her further. ”
John tapped his fingers on the blue cloth cover. “I suppose it depends on where you draw the boundary. Do we all become different people when we get reembodied in Medical?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
John’s eyes turned more knowing than was comfortable. “This is about Celia, isn’t it?”
I always went a little breathless at the name, even all these years later.
My former wife had been losing her ability to retain memories in her body—which wasn’t a problem, so long as they were preserved in her memory-book in the Library.
But an accident had wiped those clean, and our marriage had not survived their erasure.
“I tried to tell her stories,” I admitted.
“To give her my own memories in place of hers. It … proved uncomfortable for both of us.”
John nodded. “You didn’t want to feel like you had that much control over her.”
“I—yes,” I said. It was disconcerting to have someone else be so precise and on point about something so intimate. I squirmed, feeling a new sympathy for the people I prodded with questions day in and day out. “Perhaps I’m not as meddlesome as I’ve come to believe.”
“Let’s not be hasty.” I made a face at him, and John snickered into his coffee. But the speculation hadn’t left those observant eyes. “Something about Flora reminds you of Celia,” he said.
“I thought it was just the blond hair at first. Now I’m not so sure.” Some of those diary passages kept whispering through my mind … “Perhaps I’ll ask her what she would prefer,” I said. “Give the decision to the person whom it most concerns, wash my hands of the whole problem.”
“Probably best,” John said, and finished his coffee. “And now I should probably take my turn with the baby and give my beloved time to eat something.”
He rose smoothly from his chair and moved toward the little group centered on Peregrine.
Efficient practice and unnaysayable authority soon had Ruthie up, a drowsy Peregrine on John’s shoulder, several scientists shushed, and a soothing sense of calm returning to the space.
Most of the club members wandered off, flipping through notebook pages and talking animatedly about the day’s revelations.
Ruthie came over looking equal parts joyful and wrung out, like a party frock freshly washed and spread out to dry. “Hullo, Aunt,” he said. “Fancy a sandwich?”
I gratefully accepted, and we decamped to the bar area, food not being permitted in the library.
The Antikythera’s chef had a way with a Monte Cristo that was something close to witchcraft. I wolfed down the first half and savored the second.
Ruthie ate absently, gaze flicking over to Peregrine approximately every three seconds. “May I ask you something, Aunt Dorothy?”
I waved to indicate yes, swallowing my bite of sandwich.
“How much do you remember of my mother?”
I paused, looking at him narrowly. He was serious—as serious as my nephew ever got, anyway—and there was a light in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before.
This wasn’t an idle question, I realized. This was about … before. John must have told him the secret.
To be honest, I was less than surprised.
John’s training, like mine, meant he was aware of certain facts about the origin of our journey that were not publicly known among the Fairweather’s passenger population.
Nothing dangerous, merely … unsettling. I’d been expecting John to fill Ruthie in at some point—honestly, when I’d learned it, I’d asked why Ruthie and the other scriptwriters hadn’t been told, but had been fobbed off with some murmurings about security and discretion and other nonsense.
But now Ruthie knew, and knew that I knew. Poor John—I hoped the conversation hadn’t been too hard on him.
My nephew was still waiting for my answer.
I pulled together the tattered threads of ancient memories, such as remained.
“You look like her,” I said. “You even talk like her. I remember being at her wedding to your father, and holding her hand during the divorce trial. They were still quite scandalous proceedings then, so she moved with you to the States to raise you in a society that wouldn’t hold it against you quite so much.
And I remember … we had a cottage, growing up, a small thing in the farthest corner of the estate.
Meant for a hunting lodge, but Mother had it done over so it was more like a tea cake, all pastels and soft cushions.
We basically lived there in summers, your mother and I. ”
He nodded, his eyes distant.
I braced myself and gentled my voice. “You?”
It was a while before he answered. “Her perfume,” he said. “Lilacs.”
I’d forgotten that, and had to catch my breath.
“I found a bottle in a shop once that smelled right. I keep it on the nightstand, so every now and then I can smell it and try to remember more.” He blinked hastily and shrugged, shifting in his seat. “I know she loved me,” he said. “I only wish…”
“You wish you remembered her loving you,” I said. “Instead of simply knowing it.” He nodded and promptly busied himself with his own sandwich.
It was a dodge—one his mother never would have made. Perhaps he took after me in some ways, after so many centuries. But I, too, yearned for a subject change. “Could I ask for your technical expertise?”
Ruthie nodded, wiping a droplet of au jus from the corner of his mouth.
“Could someone alter a skimmer to erase someone’s memories?”
“Theoretically yes,” he said, somewhat muffled, then chewed a bit and thought a bit and swallowed.
“The skimmers use the same kind of light we use to record memory-books in the Library—and all the bodies on the Fairweather are particularly sensitive to that kind of light. The molecular markers, you see.”
“How precise is it?”
“Not very, I expect—you wouldn’t be able to choose your targets.
The most you could do would be to erase whatever memory the person was trying to project.
Might take several attempts. Would be dangerous, too, for the person you’re working on.
” He picked at the crusts of his prime rib dip.
“Skimmers aren’t as powerful as anything in the Library, but they’re still nothing to go fooling around with. ”
“Could you induce a stroke by trying to erase a memory?”
“I should bloody well think so— Hang on, this is about Flora, isn’t it? That’s how she died, do you think?”
I grimaced but nodded.
Violet was going to be disappointed if it turned out this opposite-of-a-murder involved something that looked an awful lot like murder.
A shame—it had seemed such a pleasant, wholesome case at first.