The hole paused. "This is true," it said.
She pressed her advantage. "Then why did you do it?"
"It was a reflex, like blinking in a bright light, or drawing one's hand back from a fire. When I sense matter, I am attracted to it."
"The proper cliche would be 'like a moth to a flame.' But you're not a moth, and I'm not a flame. I don't believe you. I think you could have stopped yourself if you wanted to."
Again the hole hesitated. "You are correct."
"So you were trying to...?"
"I was trying to eat you."
"Just like that? Eat someone you've been having a conversation with?"
"Matter is matter," the hole said, and Xanthia thought she detected a defensive note in its voice.
"What do you think of what I said we're going to do with you? You were going to tell me, but we got off on that story about where you came from."
"As I understand it, you propose to return for me. I will be towed to near Pluto's orbit, sold, and eventually come to rest in the heart of an orbital power station, where your species will feed matter into my gravity well, extracting power cheaply from the gravitational collapse."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it."
"It sounds ideal. My life is struggle. Failing to find matter to consume would mean loss of mass until I am smaller than an atomic nucleus. The loss rate would increase exponentially, and my universe would disappear. I do not know what would happen beyond that point. I have never wished to find out."
How much could she trust this thing? Could it move very rapidly? She toyed with the idea of backing off still further. The two of them were now motionless relative to each other, but they were both moving slowly away from the location she had given Zoe.
It didn't make sense to think it could move in on her fast. If it could, why hadn't it? Then it could eat her and wait for Zoe. to arrive—Zoe, who was helpless to detect the hole with her broken mass detector.
She should relay the new vectors to Zoe. She tried to calculate where her twin would arrive, but was distracted by the hole speaking.
"I would like to speak to you now of what I initially contacted you for. Listening to Pluto radio, I have become aware of certain facts that you should know, if, as I suspect, you are not already aware of them. Do you know of Clone Control Regulations?"
"No, what are they?" Again, she was afraid without knowing why.
The genetic statutes, according to the hole, were the soul of simplicity. For three hundred years, people had been living just about forever. It had become necessary to limit the population. Even if everyone had only one child—the Birthright—population would still grow. For a while, clones had been a loophole. No more. Now, only one person had the right to any one set of genes. If two possessed them, one was excess, and was summarily executed.
"Zoe has prior property rights to her genetic code," the hole concluded. "This is backed up by a long series of court decisions."
"So I'm—"
"Excess."
Zoe met her at the airlock as Xanthia completed the docking maneuver. She was smiling, and Xanthia felt the way she always did when Zoe smiled these days: like a puppy being scratched behind the ears. They kissed, then Zoe held her at arm's length.
"Let me look at you. Can it only be three months? You've grown, my baby."
Xanthia blushed. "I'm not a baby anymore, Mother." But she was happy. Very happy.
"No. I should say not." She touched one of Xanthia's breasts, then turned her around slowly. "I should say not. Putting on a little weight in the hips, aren't we?"
"And the bosom. One inch while I was gone. I'm almost there." And it was true. At sixteen, the young clone was almost a woman.
"Almost there," Zoe repeated, and glanced away from her twin. But she hugged her again, and they kissed, and began to laugh as the tension was released.
They made love, not once and then to bed, but many times, feasting on each other. One of them remarked—Xanthia could not remember who because it seemed so accurate that either of them might have said it—that the only good thing about these three-month separations was the homecoming.
"You did very well," Zoe said, floating in the darkness and sweet exhausted atmosphere of their bedroom many hours later. "You handled the lifeboat like it was part of your body. I watched the docking. I wanted to see you make a mistake, I think, so I'd know I still have something on you."
Her teeth showed in the starlight, rows of lights below the sparkles of her eyes and the great dim blossom of her hair.
"Ah, it wasn't that hard," Xanthia said, delighted, knowing full well that it was that hard.
"Well, I'm going to let you handle it again the next swing. From now on, you can think of the lifeboat as your ship. You're the skipper."
It didn't seem like the time to tell her that she already thought of it that way. Nor that she had christened the ship.
Zoe laughed quietly. Xanthia looked at her.
"I remember the day I first boarded my own ship," she said. "It was a big day for me. My own ship."
"This is the way to live," Xanthia agreed. "Who needs all those people? Just the two of us. And they say hole hunters are crazy. I... wanted to..." The words stuck in her throat, but Xanthia knew this was the time to get them out, if there ever would be a time. "I don't want to stay too long at Pluto, Mother. I'd like to get right back out here with you." There, she'd said it.
Zoe said nothing for a long time.
"We can talk about that later."
"I love you, Mother," Xanthia said, a little too loudly.
"I love you, too, baby," Zoe mumbled. "Let's get some sleep, okay?"
She tried to sleep, but it wouldn't happen. What was wrong?
Leaving the darkened room behind her, she drifted through the ship, looking for something she had lost, or was losing, she wasn't sure which. What had happened, after all? Certainly nothing she could put her finger on. She loved her mother, but all she knew was that she was choking on tears.
In the water closet, wrapped in the shower bag with warm water misting around her, she glanced in the mirror.
"Why? Why would she do a thing like that?"
"Loneliness. And insanity. They appear to go together. This is her solution. You are not the first clone she has made."
She had thought herself beyond shock, but the clarity that simple declarative sentence brought to her mind was explosive. Zoe had always needed the companionship Xanthia provided. She needed a child for diversion in the long, dragging years of a voyage; she needed someone to talk to. Why couldn't she have brought a dog? She saw herself now as a shipboard pet, and felt sick. The local leash laws would necessitate the destruction of the animal before landing. Regrettable, but there it was. Zoe had spent the last year working up the courage to do it.
How many little Xanthias? They might even have chosen that very name; they would have been that much like her. Three, four? She wept for her forgotten sisters. Unless...
"How do I know you're telling me the truth about this? How could she have kept it from me? I've seen tapes of Pluto. I never saw any mention of this."
"She edited those before you were born. She has been careful. Consider her position: there can be only one of you, but the law does not say which it has to be. With her death, you become legal. If you had known that, what would life have been like in Shirley Temple?"
"I don't believe you. You've got something in mind, I'm sure of it."
"Ask her when she gets here. But be careful. Think it out, all the way through."
She had thought it out. She had ignored the last three calls from Zoe while she thought. All the options must be considered, all the possibilities planned for. It was an impossible task; she knew she was far too emotional to think clearly, and there wasn't time to get herself under control.