She skimmed through the rest of it, barely noticing the proposed terms; grant barely enough to live on (well, she could always get a part-time job waitressing or something, or grading papers for the biology faculty); available facilities—pretty good, they must have some kind of medical or industrial tie-up; help in finding accommodations…
Sandy read the letter again. Then she folded it and put it back in the envelope.
It was nice that somebody really wanted her—or her fifty-three cultures. And it was the kind of setup she knew and understood. And getting her Ph.D had been her goal in life for as long as she could remember. If Donander gave doctorates they wouldn’t count—no accreditation…
None of which mattered a damn. There was nothing, really, to think about; the decision had been made, in effect, when she saw the scum of algae on those tidal pools, under two alien moons. If there was a biologist anywhere who could turn down a job bringing life to brand-new worlds, it was not Sandy Jennings. Especially when the job included opportunities to explore life on the old world, back when it was new—or much younger, at any rate.
She should have given Marius her answer right away, whether he wanted it or not. What, after all, was she supposed to think about? There was nothing here that she needed, nothing for her to regret—
Except—
Her fingers tightened suddenly on the envelope.
Except—
No. She had the offer of a brand-new life, a clean break with the old one. The past didn’t matter any longer.
Except that it did.
There were white marks on her fingers where the stiff edge of the envelope had cut into them. She fumbled back the flap and searched through the papers inside. The card she wanted had gone to the bottom, naturally.
Marius had told her to call the number on the card, recite the number of the phone she was using to the answering machine, ring off, and stay where she was for two minutes; then, whichever universe he happened to be in, he would reply. She occupied the two minutes by trying to work out how it was done. On the deadline, the phone buzzed.
“This is Sandy. I have to talk to you.”
“Where?”
“The laboratory.” There was no one else around.
“Five minutes,” Marius said.
She was watching the wall, expecting him to come through it; but instead she heard the door open and brisk footsteps crossing the wooden floor. He pulled a stool from under a bench and sat down opposite her.
“Well, Sandy. What is wrong?”
“It’s not—that is, I—I wanted to know—”
Oh, damn. She should have spent the five minutes working out what she had to say, instead of just sitting here.
Sandy drew a deep breath and started again.
“You’ve got ways of finding things out, haven’t you? What happened in the past, I mean.”
Marius pursed his lips. “Some things, yes.”
“You found out about me. That I don’t know my own name or where I was born. That my mother abandoned me when I was four years old.”
“We have facilities for obtaining any information that is on record. What is it you want to know?”
“Why Mom ditched me that way. What happened to her and Da. That isn’t on record. I went to the police, when I was old enough. They looked the case up. Some officer’d tried to trace how I got to town. No dice. But you can—can go places in the past. So you could send me back—I know who to talk to—”
“No. Absolutely not.” Marius frowned heavily. “Obviously they were involved in something dangerous, and—no.” He chewed his lip in the first sign of indecision Sandy had seen him show. “But if you really wish to know—”
“Of course I do! Anybody would! I can’t just—Do you mean you know—”
Marius appeared to make up his mind.
“Yes. It is not true that the police failed to trace you, though whoever told you that may have believed it. The records would not be available to him. They had been classified.”
“What? But Mom and Da—they weren’t—”
“They had been—I think the expression is put into a relocation program. By the FBI. I found a coded cross-reference in the police report and was able to trace and access the file concerned.”
“Well, go on,” said Sandy, as he paused.
“It is not an agreeable story.”
“I never thought it would be. I just want to know.”
“Very well. Your father was a member of a criminal organisation. Not the Mafia; a smaller and more ephemeral group. He was arrested and charged with several crimes, some of them committed by other members of the organisation. He felt that he was being made a fall guy, and the FBI persuaded him to testify against those responsible.”
A detached part of Sandy’s mind registered that Marius’s slang was out of date.
“He was taken from custody to a safe house and an officer dispatched to collect your mother and you. It seems that your mother had no faith in the FBI’s promise of safety. She gave the officer a cup of coffee containing several sleeping pills, and left, with you, on a bus journey. The next part I imagine you know.”
“It said in the report I walked into the police station and said Mom told me to come and play. I don’t remember it.”
“Yes. I gather the officers were somewhat confused. Also, you recited your address. It took some time to establish that the street you named did not exist in that city. Meanwhile your mother made her getaway and took the next bus home. You were eventually taken to an orphanage, as a temporary measure. The police traced you the following day to your parents’ flat, but it was empty. The FBI, hearing that questions were being asked, got hold of the investigating officer and told him to drop the matter.”
“But—damn it—”
“They seem to have taken the view that you were probably safer where you were. Also, you were conspicuous. The police were able to trace your journey because the bus driver and several passengers remembered a small red-haired girl, very forward for her age, who kept asking questions. They felt that the relocation program would have a better chance of success if your parents were alone.”
Sandy swallowed something bitter. “That stinks!”
“Very likely your parents hoped that in a year or two, when the whole organisation was behind bars, it would be practicable to claim you—”
“Like hell. They never even tried!”
“That,” said Marius slowly, “was, I am sorry to say, because they were both dead. They were killed in a head-on collision, six months after your father appeared on the witness stand. It was recorded as a genuine accident—the other party in the collision was also killed.”
Sandy was silent for a long time. Then she said, “I suppose I knew it had to be something like that.”
Marius did not attempt to reply.
“When they arrested him—was that at home?”
“I don’t—yes. I think it was.”
“The man who did it—was he a big man?”
Marius blinked. “The report does not say.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t say whether he sounded like you.”
“Like me…?” For a moment Marius looked blank. “Ah. You mean my Hungarian accent, I suppose. I have been told that it still lingers… No, the report does not say. I noticed that the officer’s surname was a Hungarian one, though I can’t recall it more exactly. If he was a first-generation immigrant—but I don’t know that, either.”
“I reckon he was.”
She ought to be feeling grieved, Sandy supposed. Or at any rate feeling something. She was aware only of a kind of emptiness, as though something deep in her mind had been dug out and disposed of. It had all been a long time ago.