And them, finally: when I struck Colette in anger, when I searched for the limitations of her inability to say no, Skye had looked at me as if just then discovering who I was for the very first time. She already knew, from what she’d read in the Khaajiir’s files. But how must it have felt for her, to see it demonstrated with such awful clarity?
I watched myself, as if from a distance, rising from the bench and approaching that planter, and as my right hand closed around the Khaajiir’s staff and as I thought a woman’s name.
The image that formed in my mind portrayed her the way she’d looked when she lived on Xana. She was a bright-eyed, wistful young woman with shoulder-length brown hair and the kind of face that makes light shine on any world where she chooses to walk.
I’d known her years later when she wore a different name and when that hair was cut short but still sleek enough to shine beneath the glow of a Bocaian sun.
Dejah had said, “You’d be surprised how many outcast Bettelhines live in other systems under assumed names.”
Lillian Jane Bettelhine.
Younger sister of Hans.
Aunt of Jason, Jelaine, and Philip.
Exiled idealist.
Name changed to Veronica Cort.
Resident of a doomed experimental Utopian community on Bocai.
Participant in the auto-genocide that community inflicted upon itself.
Loving wife of the late Bernard Cort.
Loving mother to my late brother and sister.
Loving mother to—
I dropped the Khaajiir’s staff and fell to my knees, crying a word I had not spoken in decades.
“Mommy…!”
20
BETTELHINE FAMILY BUSINESS
I’ll skip over the hysterics of the next ten minutes. I was overwrought, wrapped in loss, mourning a family torn from me that I’d refused to remember with love for more years than I care to count. An idyll had been transformed in one horrid night of blood and madness to a hell of sterile incarceration and institutional rape, leaving me not just hard but also brittle, capable of shattering into pieces on those rare occasions when something scraped the scabs off my wounds.
The Porrinyards had been very good at dealing with me at such times. Now the shared persona of Jason-and-Jelaine proved the same, its Jelaine avatar embracing me, telling me that she knew what I’d been through, that it was all right, that I had a real home now if I wanted one. I’d be lying if I claimed that I didn’t hug her back, or that many of the tears I shed in that ten minutes were grateful ones.
But I’m also Andrea Cort, and not blind.
Even as I howled, part of me was picking it apart.
Sometime ten or twenty minutes after it all came back to me, we had returned to the stone table and I was sitting opposite her again, my eyes burning but my mind working at full capacity again. The furry white thing that lived on the balcony had decided that I was its friend, or at least its pleasure slave, and was now curled up on my lap, vibrating with pleasure; my usual impulse would have been to kick it off but I stroked it anyway as I sipped the sweet juice Jelaine had gotten me. “And am I supposed to believe that this is just about family? And nothing else?”
She spread her hands. “It can be about as little or as much as you want it to be.”
“Why didn’t the Family ever reclaim me before?”
“Because that’s never been the way things were done before. Because Bettelhines who leave the corporation or allow themselves to be exiled for cause have historically never been trusted again. Offspring born to exiles are sometimes repatriated, if they have a case, but they’ve never been allowed to become Inner Family in status again, even by marriage. The risks of subversion have always been deemed too great.”
I took another sip of my juice. “So where does that leave me?”
“You?…were a special case. You were notorious. Your loving Corps”—she filled the word with special contempt—“knew who you were and did everything they could to enhance your notoriety, just so they could hold you over my father and grandfather’s generations.”
“That’s all I was? A blackmail tool?”
“Somewhat short of a doomsday weapon. Our family’s well used to being hated, and could have weathered the scandal had your identity ever been revealed. But threats to reveal your lineage could still sway certain issues of contention a few precious points toward Dip Corps advantage. And that grew even more of a factor once you embarked upon your diplomatic career and became an even more divisive figure among the other major powers. Overall it became easier, for the small number of Inner Family leaders of these past two generations who knew who you were, to let you be and just let smaller issues slide.”
I was still sure I discerned an ulterior motive. “And that’s why you’re trying to get me back now? To neutralize my effectiveness as a political lever?”
“No, Andrea, that’s the way my grandfather might have seen it. Or even my father, once upon a time. But you haven’t been an effective political lever in some time. Most of the new generation coming up now still has no idea who you are. Philip, for one, didn’t know who you were until we were all back on Xana and Jason took him aside to tell him. I wish you could have seen the expression on his face.”
“Don’t tell me you’re just being sentimental.”
“If you think that’s not a factor, you’re wrong. Aunt Lillian was exiled before either of the singles Jason and Jelaine were born, but I have researched her case and believe it a miscarriage of family justice. There was never any need to deprive her of her birthright. Or, by extension, yours.”
Damn it, she seemed sincere. And I could not afford tears again. “But that’s not all of it. That can’t be all of it. I’m not that important.”
“You are, actually, but you’re right. That’s not all of it. I suppose that to understand it all you need to start with Jason’s experiences on Deriflys.”
“What happened?”
The pain of Jason’s early life now showed on his sister’s beautiful face, not as an experience she’d heard about at a remove, but as one she could now remember herself, with a pain capable of burning her. “I’ve already given you an idea how bad it was there. Now multiply your worst perception of that world’s brutality by a factor of ten. Jason lived like an animal. There were times he had to sell himself, times he had to kill or be killed, times he was no better than a slave, and times he had to give up every shred of his dignity just to avoid starving. When the AIsource pulled him out of there—”
I sat up a little straighter. “The AIsource?”
“Yes,” she said, with defiant calm. “They sent a force into Deriflys to pull out somebody else they wanted, a brave, special girl named Harille. They had important plans for her, but Harille wouldn’t go with them unless they also rescued the boy who had loved her and protected her and kept her alive even when it might have made more sense for both of them to just lie down and die.” Jelaine’s eyes turned wistful. “It’s amazing how much love a boy like the single Jason can feel when he’s lost everything and only his ability to feel concern for another person is left, or how much a girl like Harille, who never quite loved him back, can still appreciate all he’s done for her. She gave them no choice.”
I asked, “What happened to her?”
“The last time Jason saw her, aboard the AIsource vessel that pulled them off Deriflys, she was dying. And that, Counselor, is the real reason he was so shattered when he came back to Xana. Harille had kept him sane, and now he couldn’t even know whether she’d survived.”
“And this is why the singlet Jelaine went away with him?”