Apocalypse to Go (20 page)

“Yes, the pictures in the family album were the first clue,” Ari said. “It’s fairly obvious if you look at them with an open mind. Now, the Deirdre on Terra Five died when she was six years old. It’s not as if your father was raised with a doppelgänger of your mother.”

“Still, he must have recognized her. Dad, that is, he had to know who this Deirdre was. Is. Oh, God, I’m getting so confused!”

“It’s quite confusing. I’m assuming he missed his twin sister badly. They were only fraternals, of course, but still, she was his other half, suddenly gone.”

“Her death must have hit him hard, yeah, if he was old enough to realize what had happened.”

“At six? Yes, certainly old enough to know what death means, especially living where he did. The Britannics there have a great deal to answer for.”

I refused to be distracted by politics, tempting though being distracted was. “His file won’t tell you if he knew,” I said. “But I remember stuff, odd stuff, words and hints that we could never say in front of Father Keith or Aunt Eileen.” Memories crept back into my mind like whipped dogs. “He would never celebrate his birthday, for one. Birthdays were only for kids, he told us.”

“If he had told you, it would have been the same as your mother’s. Someone in the family might have wondered.”

“Exactly. Ah, crap! A whole ’nother layer of secrets we had to keep. I bet he knew.” I started shaking, first my hands, then my whole body, but this time, fear had nothing to do with it. I had to force out the words. “I just bet he did.”

“The real question is, does your mother know?”

“I can’t say for sure, but what do you bet this is why she’s so damn determined to pretend we’re all normal?” I laughed, one harsh bark. “And her such a good Catholic lady.”

The bitterness in my voice seemed to poison the air in the room. Ari stared at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got reasons for being so mad, but let’s not go into those now.”

“Yes, let’s,” Ari said. “I can understand that you’d be angry, but let’s look at this calmly.”

“Calmly? How can I be calm about it?”

“Stop and think!” Ari plowed grimly on. “Their genetic relationship really doesn’t make a tremendous difference. Your parents were never raised as brother and sister. Your Deirdre never even had a twin brother. They come from different worlds, different cultures, different countries, even. I don’t suppose any legal system would consider—”

“It’s got nothing to do with anyone’s lousy laws.” I found myself craving the claws and fangs of the leopard women. “It’s what I know. That I know! My mother and my father—sister and brother. I don’t care how they were raised. They knew, and they married anyway. All of us, my family—we’re not legitimate, are we? Bastards, all of us, in the eyes of the damn Church! And my family, they mean the world to me, and how can I tell them?”

“Nola.” Ari laid a heavy hand on my arm. “Calm.”

“Oh, shut up!” I jerked my arm away. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to live with this rotten secret.”

“Of course I am.”

“It’s not the same for you.” I stood up. “This is personal. Let it lie.”

The room seemed to have grown very large and distant. I took my cell phone from my pocket and started to edge around the coffee table. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to call my mother.”

Ari got up fast and grabbed me from behind.

“No,” he said. “You need to calm down first. You’ll say things you’ll regret.”

“I don’t care. Let me go.”

He released his hold just long enough to grab me again, this time with leverage, and yank me around to face him. Since I was still holding the cell phone, I had to struggle one-handed. Even with rage boiling in my blood, even with Qi pouring out of me, Ari proved stronger. He threw his left arm around my waist, hauled me in, and caught my wrist with his right hand. He pressed nerve against bone with his thumb and forefinger. I yelped. My traitorous hand dropped the cell phone. He let me twist away. I turned to face him.

“You son of a bitch,” I snarled. “You used the Vulcan nerve pinch!”

“Ah, that’s better.” Ari grinned at me. “You’re yourself again.”

I stood panting for breath and rubbing my wrist with my other hand. Ari stooped down and picked up the cell phone, then stood and put it into his shirt pocket.

“As your Aunt Rose might say,” Ari said, “the female of the species is more deadly than the male. I don’t know what’s so wrong between you and Deirdre, but I’m not going to aid and abet it.”

“You just did.”

Ari sighed and set his hands on his hips. My blouse had gotten disrupted during our tussle. For anger management rather than modesty, I pulled it down and smoothed it, then ran my hands through my hair to get it off my face.

“Look,” I said, “when I was a teenager, something happened that made my mother kick me out of the house just when I needed her the most. I ended up living at my aunt’s. Without Eileen, I would have ended up on the streets, probably. Mom has been self-righteous and self-justifying ever since.” I felt the anger rising in my blood. “And all the time she—”

“Hush!” Ari laid a hand on my shoulder, but he’d softened his voice. “Nola, please! I’m trying to understand, so please, sit down.”

I sat, and he joined me on the couch. “Understand what?” I said.

“What was so wrong between you and your mother.”

“Oh, okay! I got pregnant. There. Now you know.” The memories rushed back and threatened me with tears. I shoved them away again.

“That’s not Michael, is it?”

“No! I was ten when he was born.”

“A bit young, yes. Well, it’s none of my business, actually.”

“Really? Most guys would think it was their business, if they’d been badgering some girl to marry them, and then they found out.”

“I’m not ‘most guys.’”

Now that I never would have denied. I turned slightly so I could see his expression: solemn, but not overly so. I could read sympathy in his dark eyes.

“It wasn’t my child,” Ari went on, “so it’s none of my business. But—” He hesitated. “I take it you didn’t carry it to full term.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been in a position to tell.” He turned a faint pink. His accent grew more British by the word. “Rather a lot of times now, actually, over the past few months.”

It took me a moment—well, a couple of moments—but I finally understood what he meant.

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You’ve had affairs with married women who did have kids. They had stretch marks, but I don’t.”

“Only one!”

“Only one woman or only one kid?”

“Only one married woman and only one child. But that’s true about the marks on her stomach.”

The pink on his face turned to red. We sat in silence considering each other’s sins. Finally Ari sighed. His color had returned to normal.

“Um, that affair?” he said. “It was some years ago, when I was still in the army. Long since over.”

“Ooh, you must have looked really sexy in a uniform. I bet the women were all over you.”

I was expecting a blush, but he merely smiled. Smugly.

“One last thing.” The smile disappeared. “I’d prefer not to think of my professions of undying love for you as ‘badgering some girl.’”

“Okay. I’ll just think of it as ‘badgering me,’ then.”

He rolled his eyes and caught my closer hand in both of his. I had the SPP feeling that we were on our way back to normal, whatever normal meant in a relationship like ours.

“You put up with a lot from me,” I said.

“I’m glad you recognize my sacrifices.” He gave me one of his genuine smiles, neither tigerish nor ironic. “Do you want to hear my news? What I was about to tell you just before the storm.”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Your father was paroled some weeks ago. Since he’s out, Spare14 and his supervisor at TWIXT see no reason to waste his talents when they need world-walkers so badly. They’re going to help us bring him home.”

At that moment, I never wanted to see Dad again. The irony of it made it hard to breathe. I’d get what I wanted just as I no longer wanted it.

“What’s wrong?” Ari said.

“The thought of seeing Dad makes me feel sick.”

“You might change your mind, you know. People can get used to the most appalling things, given a little time.”

“You have a point. Everyone else still wants him home, anyway, whether I do or not.”

Michael and Sean, of course, I did want to see, my poor brothers, children of incest, like we all were. It occurred to me that I needed to find a favorite insult to replace “bastard.” I was in no position to call anyone else that.

“What about Michael and Sean?” I said.

“I told Spare about the kidnapping. He’s on his way over to discuss the problem.”

“Oh, yeah.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I already knew that. I told him about it, too. I’d forgotten for a minute there.”

“This information really upset you. I’m rather surprised.”

I opened my mouth to berate him. He clapped a hand over it. I nearly bit him.

“Sorry,” he said. “My shortcoming, not yours.” He took his hand away. “You’re usually so at home with unusual phenomena that your reaction took me by surprise.”

“Oh, okay, then.” I took another deep breath. “The Church gets you so young, Ari. You can’t imagine how deep their claws sink in. For a minute there I was the good Catholic schoolgirl again, seeing her parents damned by the doctrine, seeing herself as an outcast, sinful and guilty as hell.”

“That
is
hard to understand.”

“There’s this guy, Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits. He said, ‘Give me a child till he’s seven, and I’ll make him mine for life.’ They call him a saint.” My hands clenched
into fists. I made them relax. “But he might as well have bragged about pulling the wings off butterflies.”

I would have said more, but the doorbell rang. Ari took the remote from the coffee table and flicked on the TV’s security channel. Spare14 stood on the porch outside our front door.

“I’ll just go let him in, assuming he’s not being used as a shield by an enemy.” Ari drew the Beretta in his usual pleasant way of greeting someone. “We can discuss religion later.”

Gun in hand, Ari hurried out of the room. I leaned back into the couch cushions and wished that I had a good stiff drink.

S
PARE14 ARRIVED WEARING
his baggy khaki slacks, a white shirt, and a slightly scruffy navy blue blazer with an embroidered patch on the chest pocket. I recognized the abbreviation “Oxon.” Although I had no idea which particular college the patch represented, Oxford University apparently existed on his home world. He carried his trans-dimensional briefcase, which he set down next to his armchair. Ari and I took the couch.

“So,” Spare14 began, “Michael gets his world-walker genes from your father. Your family becomes more and more interesting.”

I winced. Spare14 tilted his head to one side and blinked at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a sore wrist, and I just tweaked it.”

“That’s a pity.” Spare14 looked properly sympathetic. “Now, your father’s name on his home world was actually O’Brien. It’s certainly a common Hibernian name. Irish, I mean.”

“Yeah, it is, and it can be spelled a bunch of different ways.” I managed to keep my voice steady and change the subject. “This thing about Hibernia. Is that what they call Ireland on my dad’s home world?”

“It’s a province of Britain,” Ari put in. “A much smaller version of the British empire still exists there. It no longer
holds India or much else, really, except for Hibernia and Palestine.” His voice twisted into bitterness on the last word.

“Quite so,” Spare14 said. “I see you’ve been studying the online material for the exam, Nathan. Very good.” He turned his attention back to me. “I see no reason why we can’t get your father’s terms of parole modified.”

“Wonderful! I take it you’ve looked at his file.”

Spare14 blinked several times and smiled. He was hiding something, but before I could confront him, he said, “Of course, this does depend on his willingness to cooperate.”

“Cooperate?” I said. “Collaborate with TWIXT, you mean.”

At my choice of verb, Spare14 stiffened in his chair.

“Dad’s been in prison for thirteen years,” I went on. “How do you think he’s going to feel about law enforcement generally and specifically about the operation that put him there in the first place?”

“How did you know—” Spare14 began.

“Simple logic,” I said. “What other agency would have jurisdiction over this sort of crime?”

“Um, well, er.” Spare14 glanced away.

“You’ve been telling me for some time now that TWIXT has police capability,” I continued. “Peacock blue uniforms, right?”

“How do you know that?” Spare14 sounded annoyed. “It’s not even in the material Nathan’s been given to study.”

“She’s good at this,” Ari muttered. “Ferreting things out, I mean.”

“I received information from an eyewitness to another arrest,” I said. “There’s nothing mysterious about it.”

“Oh.” Spare14 deigned to look at me again. “I have to agree, O’Grady, that your father’s first reaction is going to be reluctance. Being released from the StopCollar and allowed to come home might be enough of a consideration to change his mind.”