Xiu Xiang shook her head. "He is strange. He looks so young . Robert — I mean 'You-Know-Who' — can be very gracious, and then suddenly cut you dead. I've seen him do that to several children. The old people steer clear of him. I think Winston Blount hates him."
Yes. Miri had watched Winston Blount in the UCSD library last Saturday. Most of her attention had been absorbed in the battle for the persona of Zulfikar Sharif, but she had not missed Blount's hostility.
Newbie Xiang glanced at the frail lady in the wheelchair. "I'm afraid Lena is right about him. He uses people. He admired my shop project and then walked off with it."
Lena cackled. That was something an elderly person could do well. In Miri's opinion it was the only positive thing about old age. "Xiu, Xiu. You told me you were thrilled to see him chop that car."
Newbie Xiang looked embarrassed. "Well, yes. I got into science with model rockets and homemade RF controllers. I'd have been nothing without hands-on experience. Nowadays, our access to real things is muffled by layers of automated bureaucracy — and I guess my own SHE is partly to blame. So both Robert and I wanted to break something, and I cheered him for acting . But what I wanted was of no concern to him. I was just a convenient tool."
Lena laughed again. "You're so lucky. You learned in days what took me years." She raised a clawed hand to wipe at her hair. Modern medicine had not completely failed Lena Gu. Five years ago she'd had Parkinson's. Miri remembered the tremors. Modern medicine had reversed her Parkinson's, kept her mind sharp, stopped various ills large and small. But her abnormal osteoporosis was still beyond cure. As far back as the second grade, Miri had been able to understand the technical "why" of that. The moral "why" was something even Alice couldn't explain.
Miri looked into the wizened face of the senior witch. "I-I'm glad it took you years to see through You-Know-Who. Otherwise you two would never have had Bob and raised him to marry Alice… and I would never be."
Lena looked away. "Yes," she grumped. "Bobby was the only reason I stayed with your grandfather. We gave Bobby a good home. And he was halfway human with the boy, at least till it was clear he couldn't run Bob's adult life. By that time, Bob had escaped to the Marine Corps." Her gaze flickered back to Miri. "I congratulate myself on that. I made a terrible mistake marrying your grandfather, but it brought two lovely lives into existence — and it only cost me twenty years."
"Don't you ever miss him?"
Mistress Gu's eyes narrowed. "That's coming perilously close to arguing with me, young lady."
"Sorry." Miri came over to kneel on the floor beside Lena's wheelchair. She reached out to hold Lena's hand. The old woman smiled. She knew what was coming, but she didn't have completely effective defenses. "You had all those years apart from him. I remember you visiting, back when You-Know-Who was well and never visited." Even then, Lena had been a little old lady, a busy doctor who smiled the most when she was talking to Miri. "Were you happy then?"
"Of course! After all those years, I was free of the monster!"
"But when You-Know-Who began to lose his mind, then you helped him."
Lena rolled her eyes and looked at Newbie Xiang. "When I say the word, you kick this brat back on the street."
Xiang looked uncertain. "Um, okay."
"But that's not… just yet." Lena looked back at Miri. "We've been over this ground before, Miri. Bob came here to Rainbows End and begged me to help. Remember? He brought you along with him. Bob has never under-stood how things were between Robert and me. God bless him, he doesn't realize that all the affection he saw was just for him. But between his pleading and your cute little face, I agreed to help out with the monster's final years…. And you know, sometimes dementia softens a person up. There was a year or so, when Robert was nearly helpless, but he could still recognize people and remember our years together — there was a time when he was tractable. We actually got along for a while!"
Miri nodded.
"And then they figured how to cure Robert's brand of dementia. By then your grandfather had declined from tractability into a kind of veggie state. Miri, I would have stuck with him through the end if there hadn't been the miracle cure. But I could see what was coming. The monster would be back." Lena punched a crooked finger in her granddaughter's direction. "Burn me once, shame on him. Burn me twice, shame on me. So I stay out of the picture. Understand?"
But her other hand remained in Miri's; the girl gave it a squeeze. "But couldn't this be different? By the time they cured Grandfather, part of him had already died." That had been Jin Li's theory, not Miri's. "I know he's often angry now, but that's because he's lost a lot. Maybe the bad things you remember are gone too."
Lena waved her free hand in the direction of Newbie Xiang. "Did you hear what Xiu just said about his new nobleness of character?"
Miri thought fast: It never worked with Alice, but sometimes a quick change of subject could distract Bob. She glanced at Newbie Xiang. "Lena, you've been living here since Grandfather's been sick. You could have moved anywhere since you don't visit us anymore, but you're still just ten miles away."
Lena's chin came up. "I've lived in San Diego for years. I'm not going to give up seeing my friends, shopping the old stores, hiking — well I have given up the hiking. The point is that, even resurrected, You-Know-Who is not going to run my life!"
"But — " very thin ice here !" — did you know Dr. Xiang before?"
The senior witch's lips thinned. "No. And now you're going to point out, or let plaintive silence imply, that since there are twenty-five hundred oldfolks here at Rainbows End, this matchup couldn't be coincidence."
Miri was silent.
Finally Newbie Xiang spoke up. "It was my choice. I moved down here this summer, about the time I got my get-up-and-go back. I'm one of the older people living at Rainbows End, but I'm so bright and bubbly — " a strange sad smile " — they don't know what to do with me. So I volunteered to be a roommate. It's worked out well. Your grandma is ten years younger than I am, but that doesn't mean so much at our age." She gave Lena's shoulder a pat.
Miri remembered that Lena Llewelyn Gu had done years of psychiatric consulting here at Rainbows End. If anyone could arrange a matchup with Xiu Xiang, it was her. She opened her mouth to remark on this — and noticed the warning glare in Lena's eyes, as clear as any silent messaging could ever be.
After a moment, Lena shifted in her chair. "See, my girl? Pure coincidence. But I do admit it's been useful. Xiu keeps me advised of You-Know-Who's adventures in modern education." She gave a nasty witchy smile that needed no help from Miri's special effects.
"Yes," said Xiang. "We, we have our collective eyes on him."
"The monster is not going catch up with me this time around." Miri rocked back. "You're running a joint entity!" She hadn't dreamed the two witches could be so truly, modernly magical. "A what?" said Newbie Xiang.
"A joint entity. Partners with complementary strengths and weaknesses. In public you are one, represented by the mobile partner. But what you can do and understand is the best of each of you." Xiang stared at her without comprehension.
Oh . Miri pinged both women. Except for Lena's medicals, they were fully offline. Miri had been too distracted by her own imagining. "You aren't wearing, are you?"
Xiu gestured at her desk. "I have my view-page and these books. I'm trying to learn so many serious things, Miri. I don't have time to bother with wearing."