“Yes, but like Tero says, you never know what you might stumble across while working on something else,” Torin pointed out. “Who knows if some breakthrough might be lurking inside the code for some silly palmport app.”
Justen seemed to be having a hard time swallowing a bit of fish. “True,” he said at last, coughing a bit. “Sometimes our discoveries are fortunate accidents. Or even unfortunate ones.”
“Like with the genetic experiment that caused the Reduction in the first place, all those centuries ago.” Heloise shook her head sadly.
Persis’s father quickly moved to change the subject. “Tero is such a promising young man. He and Persis have been trying to one-up each other since they were children, you know.”
Justen’s brow furrowed.
“In collecting admirers, I’m far ahead,” Persis said quickly, batting her eyelashes. “Tero is quite handsome with those broad shoulders of his. Like some sort of ancient warrior. But he does chatter on about the dullest subjects imaginable. All this nonsense about chemical reactions and DNA. It’s deadly boring.”
Her parents looked shocked, and Persis wanted to dive under the table when she imagined what they must be thinking of her. As dessert was served and kiwine flowed, she found it more and more difficult to restrain herself to flaky responses and interjections. Usually, dinners at Scintillans were one place where she could still be herself, still talk about politics and history and, yes, even gengineering like the girl who’d once beaten Tero and Isla and everyone else for top marks in school. But now, even that was taken from her. She ducked the odd looks she was getting from her father. Hopefully, he’d write her behavior off as trying to steer the conversation into a light, casual zone that would make it easy on her mother. But she could hardly bear the confused glances her mother sent in her direction. After all, how many more dinners would they have together? Could she really afford to waste the remaining ones masked as an empty-headed socialite?
After dinner ended, Justen said, “Which way is my room? I’m all turned around right now.”
“I’ll show him,” said Persis and led him down the corridor toward the guest suites. But as soon as they rounded the corner, Justen put a hand on her arm. Persis stopped short.
“Your mother,” he said abruptly, his face impassive and somber. “How long has it been going on? Six months? More?”
“What are you talking about?” Persis asked, though dread trickled through her veins at his words.
“Persis, just stop. She’s managing the symptoms well, but it’s only going to go downhill from here.”
“Honestly, Citizen, I haven’t the foggiest—”
He hissed in frustration. “You might be able to hide it from your other silly aristo friends, but I’m a medic. I know DAR when I see it.”
Nine
NO ONE HAD EVER said it out loud to Persis before. Not her father, or her mother, or the family medic who shook her head and frowned during her weekly visits to Scintillans. The word was verboten. Talk of Darkening was banished from the grounds. Never mind that she saw it echoed in the eyes of each servant on the estate. Never mind that she dreaded every time she visited the court that today would be the day the whispers began. That today would be the day the story escaped and became fodder for the gossips. The day it became spoken. The day it became real.
Did you hear about Lady Heloise Blake? Darkened. Guess that’s what comes of Lord Blake marrying a reg. Can you imagine? All that beauty, all that cleverness, drained away like water down a hole. I wonder if their daughter’s got it, too?
For hundreds of years, the survivors of the wars that had cracked open the Earth and destroyed every place and person except those on New Pacifica had lived as two populations: aristo and Reduced. The few natural regs born were viewed as aberrations. Then the Helo Cure came along, promising that every child born would be regular. The cure was adopted by both nations, and the Reduction ended in a single generation. But as with the Reduction itself, the side effects were discovered too late. Dementia of Acquired Regularity was the dark underbelly of the cure, the shadow that lay over the salvation of the human race.
It was inescapable. Gengineers could make fantastic beasts and nanotechnologists could customize every material under the stars, but no one could solve this puzzle. Just like Reduction, Darkening defied science; and again, there were those who wondered if the victims deserved their fate—if they should have been content to remain Reduced.
Without the Helo Cure, Heloise Blake would never have grown into the brilliant, perceptive woman she once was, would never have met Torin, would never have had Persis or lived so many happy years in Scintillans. Some days, when Persis was gripped by the terror of what was to come, she remembered something her mother had said to her long ago. Something she hadn’t understood at the time.
“Better a short life lived well.”
At first, you might dismiss the symptoms as mere forgetfulness, a slightly spaced-out look in the eyes. But that was just the first few months. Full-blown senility followed, along with loss of muscle control, as more and more areas of the brain were compromised. The year after that came loss of speech, loss of sight, loss of hearing. Most victims wound up motionless vegetables, trapped in a prison of their minds and bodies for the final months before their brains broke down completely and they passed away at last.
The Darkened were usually sent away to sanitariums—that is, if they didn’t take their own lives first. They’d escaped Reduction—the worst fate in the world was to be dragged back into its depths before they died.
Which was why the word was forbidden in Scintillans. Her mother was . . . sick. That was all. It wasn’t Darkening. It couldn’t be. As Heloise’s parents had both died young in an accident, there was no proof that either of them had it. No proof that this was, indeed, what ailed Lady Blake.
And since it wasn’t Darkening, there was no reason for Persis to get tested. No reason at all for her to learn whether or not she’d lose her mind and die in less than twenty-five years. No reason at all to think about what might lie in her future every single time she looked deep into a Reduced prisoner’s eyes and wondered what, if anything, they retained of their former selves while trapped in their mindless hell.
“Persis?” Justen passed a hand before her eyes. His voice was filled with a concern Persis resented at that moment. “You do know, right?”
“Shh!” She opened the door to Justen’s guest room and yanked him inside. “What part of ‘watch your tone’ makes you think it’s acceptable to start tossing around accusations in my home?”
“Accusations?” Justen asked, incredulous. “It’s DAR. She didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not her fault.”
“No,” Persis said without thinking. “It’s Persistence Helo’s.”
Justen didn’t look away, didn’t flinch as she expected. He met her eyes, his face grave. “Yes, it is. It’s horrible. Persis, I’m so sorry.”
Now she turned from him, from the pity on his face. They’d hidden it so well for so many months, but it had taken him seconds in her mother’s presence to see the truth. If this was the case, soon they wouldn’t be able to hide from anyone. Heloise Blake, once the darling of the Albian court, would vanish, and in her place would be a story about some reg who thought she was good enough to marry an aristo and infect the family line. Her mother would die in ignominy, the victim of a disease most aristos liked to pretend didn’t exist, because it would never touch them.