He'd done it for his wife, Geniveve, and after he'd buried her he'd done it for Genie when Genie was dying by centimeters from cystic fibrosis. He hadn't done it when Leah sailed the Calgary into Earth's atmosphere with the brittle unholy courage that only an adolescent could muster—C'est la raison que nous les envoyons pour mourir dans la guerre, dans le cas òu tu ne le savais pas—because Gabe couldn't reach Leah. But Jenny could, and Jenny had stood in his place, and Gabe had been there for Jen. As he'd done it before, again, and again, and again.
But, he was tired of it. He said it to himself, sitting motionless on the edge of his bunk, his feet dangling, the cold metal edge of the rack cutting the backs of his thighs and his hands clenching and unclenching on the blankets. He thought it as he leaned forward and watched Jenny answer those invasive questions with dignity and aplomb that he knew had to be borrowed at loanshark rates against that night, against tomorrow.
Je suis fatigué lui.
He needed to be there. Even without the ability to stand beside her on that stage and squeeze her hand behind the podium, he needed to be in the room. Jenny was a professional; she was cool, and collected, and gracious: the picture of a warrior who has lived long enough to learn both honor and its price.
The Chinese fils de putain was coming after her like a mangy feral dog, and no matter how well she was handling it, Gabriel would have liked to wring his neck instead of the dark wool blankets. “I understand,” the man in the mahogany suit said, “that there are arrests for prostitution and possession of drugs that are not mentioned in your military records. Would you care to explain why those records were purged?”
The speaker kept leaning over to confer with a jowly middle-aged man in a Chinese uniform. That must be General Shijie.
He just wished he could be there. Where she could see him. Where she could see his eyes. But she was thirty-five thousand vertical kilometers away, and he was helpless again.
You cannot save them, Gabriel. Sometimes you cannot even hold their hands.
Like Leah. God have mercy on his soul.
Jenny, in the projection, lifted her chin. Gabriel knew that look, knew the way it stretched her long neck above her collar. Knew the arrogant sparkle in her eyes, and knew how much it cost her to keep it there. “Not purged, sir. Sealed. Those incidents occurred while I was a juvenile, under Canadian law, and they are not considered part of my permanent criminal record. Which, I might add, is clean—”
Someone tapped on the hatchway. Gabe startled, torn between relief and irritation, and shoved himself off the bed. He forgot to duck again. “Turn that off please, Dick?”
“It's Genie,” the AI answered, as the display obediently flickered out. Gabe closed his eyes and calmed his breathing, pressing his dinged forehead with the back of his hand.
Then he went and opened the door.
Calisse de chrisse, she looked like her mother. Not as much as Leah had, but the same huge eyes, straight nose, the honey-blond hair that looked as soft as silk until you got your hands into it and then turned out to be wild, electric, alive. And her eyes were as big as churchbells, and her hands were twined together, shaking.
“You saw the news,” he said. He didn't move aside and let her in, although it was ship drill; you never stood in an open doorway like a rubbernecker and jawed with somebody on the other side. It wasn't safe. He glanced over his shoulder, and the condemning silence of the interface, the feed he wasn't watching. He wasn't there for Jenny, and there was no way he could be.
And he didn't know what to do with Genie anymore. It had always been him being big for Leah and Leah being big for Genie, and now Leah was gone, a hole in the middle of their family like trying to make a sandwich out of two plain slices of dry white bread. There was nothing to hold them together.
“Is it true, what they said?”
He looked her in the eye and pursed his lips, and closed his eyes, and turned aside for a second to collect his thoughts. When he looked again, ready to ask Genie the question he didn't have an answer to himself—She's still your Aunt Jenny. Does it matter if it is? — when he turned his head back and opened his eyes and looked at the hatchway, his daughter was gone.
He straightened up and knotted both hands in his mop of hair and cursed in three languages, two of them French.
Coward. Lache. Enfouaré.
He only remembered to dog the hatch behind him because Richard yelled at him before he got too far down the corridor.
Genie made a good job of vanishing. He looked for forty minutes before it occurred to him to ask Richard for help. He wasn't particularly surprised when Richard hacked his contact and ear clip for a private conversation, shrugged, and said, “She asked me not to tell you. She said she wanted to be invisible.”
“Do you make a habit of concealing wayward teenagers from their possibly stupid but well-meaning parents?” Gabe leaned against the corridor bulkhead, making sure he was between pressure doors, and took a moment to think, and breathe.
“I'm trying to avoid situational ethics,” Richard answered. “I'm stuck with omniscience, but I don't want to develop a reputation as a jealous god. Or a meddling one.”
“You've been meddling all along, Dick.”
Gabe wasn't quite prepared for the long silence before Richard answered, “I know.” The AI shook his head and rubbed his palms together, a frown creasing his forehead. “The ethics are getting complicated. In any case, I'll be happy to tell Genie you're looking for her. Where shall I tell her you'll be?”
“Is Charlie in the hydroponics labs?”
“No, he's in the larger observation lounge. Snoring. All the greenhouses are empty except Center-13.”
“Tell her I'll be in Charlie's main lab, s'il te plais.”
He didn't think he was imagining the warmth in Richard's voice when Richard answered, “It will be my pleasure, Gabriel.”
The smell of growing things eased his headache, and even spinning sunlight was sunlight, and full-spectrum lighting was a kind relief after the energy-saving flourescence that gave the pilots screaming conniptions and lit most of the Montreal's cabins and corridors in a pale minty green. Gabe found himself walking slowly up and down the aisles between the Plexiglas tanks, running his fingers over the broad leaves of soybeans and breathing deeply, as if the oxygen they emitted could ease his throbbing temples by being absorbed through the skin. He'd forgotten even to grab his ship-shoes when he ran into the corridor after Genie. The floor's absorbent nonskid matting was tacky and slightly springy under his bare feet.
He turned when the hatch swung open, but it wasn't Genie. Instead, Elspeth picked one foot up high, stepped over the knee knocker with a grace that belied her round little frame, and dogged the hatch tight behind her. “Gabe?”
He frowned and folded his arms. “Of course she went to you. I should have known that without being told.”
Elspeth's lips worked, but she held her peace as she came up the line of beans and cabbages and mustard plants, brushing aside the sunshine-yellow sprays of the latter's flowers. She stood in front of him, foursquare, and looked all the way up, glowering. “What did you say to that child, Gabe?”
“Why am I the bad guy? I barely had time to get a word out!”