—Mia?
—What can you tell me about my father?
—Where is this coming from?
—Do you remember a man by the name of Dieter?
I do. I was still a teenager when I met Didi. He studied music history. He could talk about opera until morning if you let him.
—You saw him?
—He thought I was you.
I was about Mia’s age the last time we saw each other. The resemblance would have been confusing. He would ask questions, too many questions.
—Mia. Dieter was not your father. Even if he were, it does not matter.
—It matters to me.
—It matters to you that you have a father. It does not matter who it is. You would be the very same person no matter who it was.
—No, Mother. Call me crazy but it kind of matters to me whether I killed my dad or not.
—You did not kill your father. You did what you had to do, Mia. I would have done the same thing. We kill to survive, like every other living thing.
—What happened in Bad Saarow?
—What?
—You heard me, Mother.
I did, but I was not ready for it.
—What did Dieter tell you?
—Nothing. He said I should ask you, so I’m asking you.
—There is nothing to tell, Mia. What happened in Bad Saarow is between me and him. It does not concern you.
She knows I am lying but it does not matter. She does not need to remember. Not now.
—Why did we leave Germany?
—I told you, Mia. The Tracker was closing in on us, as he is now.
More lies. I have started something and I cannot stop it.
—How do you know?
Doubt is hard to get rid of once it sets its roots. Dieter planted the seed and I am feeding it with lies. Ragweed.
—Because my mother said so…. I know you are upset, Mia. You have every right to be. I wish there were something I could say to make you feel better but there is not. All I can tell you is that you did the right thing. It will take time, but you will learn to make peace with what you did.
—…
—You will, Mia. I promise you.
—It’s not so much what I did that bothers me. That’s not true, it’s eating me alive, but what bothers me most is that I knew how, Mother. I didn’t hesitate. Fuck, I—
—Watch your tongue, Mia.
—I’m sorry, but I did. I stood in front of a whole platoon and I knew exactly how I could kill them all. What’s wrong with me?
—Nothing, Mia. We are… percipient. We have always been. You knew what to do for the same reason you can do physics in your sleep.
—What does that make me?
—I’m not sure what you mean.
—What are we, Mother?
—We are the Kibsu.
—Don’t do that. We’re not the same thing as everyone else, are we?
—Our blood is somewhat different when you look at it under a microscope, but it is blood. Beyond that, you know as much as I do. We lost the knowledge a long time ago.
—When?
—What does it matter, Mia? Around twenty-eight hundred years ago. The Eleven is the first of us we have any knowledge of. Her mother died before she could tell her everything.
—So you don’t know why I’m like you? Why I can tell exactly what my daughter will look like?
—You are upset.
—I’m not upset!
—Fine. And no, Mia. I do not. Do you think I would keep it from you if I did? We do not know why any children are the way they are. Most of what we know comes from work on pea plants almost a century ago.
—I’m sorry, pea plants?
—Pea plants. A monk named Mendel—he was a botanist—bred lots of pea plants and looked at different traits, like the pod shape or color, the height of the plant. He found that traits do not mix, that one always wins out over the other.
—What does that mean?
—It means tall plants and short plants do not make medium plants, only tall plants. Mendel described the ways in which pea plants inherit these “traits”—he called them factors—from their parents. He published his findings in 1866. No one cared at the time but most of what we know is straight out of Mendel’s work. People talk about genes now but we have no idea what they are. Some researchers think they are proteins. There was a paper last year that showed a nucleic acid was involved in how bacteria inherit certain traits. We simply do not know.
—What does that have to do with us?
—Everything. Whatever these genes are, our children seem to inherit all of them from us, and none from their father.
—We could find out. We could help with the research.
—No, Mia. We will not waste time indulging personal curiosity. That is not our path.
—…
—Tell me what the path is.
—Mother!
—I mean it.
—Take them to the stars, before Evil comes and kills them all. That is the path.
—You should find comfort in that. Most people do not have a clear purpose.
—But what if… Never mind.
—Mia…
—What if we’re wrong? We’ve lost the knowledge. You said yourself we don’t know why we do what we do. Why do we keep doing it? Take them to the stars. It’s just words on a necklace, Mother. Why do we follow them like scripture?
—Because they are your words. You see the person who wrote them every time you look in the mirror. You see her sitting across from you now. I do not know why we set ourselves that task but we did. We made a choice and you would make it again if it were yours to make.
—I don’t—
—You do know. I’ve seen you tear through our journals as if you’d read them before. The events are unfamiliar, but the choices feel obvious. You know what these women will do before you read it, and you know why they did it even if it is not on the page. You convince yourself otherwise because you crave what everyone else has, but you know who you are. Deep down, you have always known. It scares you, the same way it scared all of us, until…
—Until what?
—Until you see your own daughter and realize she is you. Then you will know. You will know you are me, and my mother, and the Eighty-Seven, and the Ten. And you will know that those words are real.
—All right, that’s enough. I’ll be okay, Mother. I’m okay. Let’s talk about something else.
—We do not need to talk about anything. You have some personal items to pack.
—Do we really need to move now?
—Tomorrow. He is too close for us to stay.
—How do you know?
—I told you. There was a murder across the street from—
—People get murdered every day, Mother. It doesn’t mean it’s the Tracker.
—It was not a murder. It was a bloodbath.
—There are deranged people ev—
—It happened across from our house! I will not take that chance, Mia. Tomorrow we move to Moscow. Pack what you can. We will burn the house in the morning.
—I just…