Nemesis (7 page)

“I’m sure you do like to think that. But it was through Pitt.”

Insigna drew a deep breath. “Where is this leading us?”

“Listen!” His voice was low, as it had been since she had reminded him that Marlene was sleeping. “I cannot
believe that a whole Settlement of people are going to risk traveling with hyper-assistance. How do you know what will happen? How do you know it will work? It could kill us all.”

“The Far Probe worked well.”

“Were there living things on this Far Probe? If not, how do you know how living things will react to hyper-assistance? What do you know about hyper-assistance?”

“Not a thing.”

“Why not? You’re working right there in the laboratory. You’re not working on the farms, as I am.”

(He
is
jealous, thought Insigna.) Aloud, she said, “When you say
the
laboratory, you seem to imply we’re all piled together in one room. I told you. I’m an astronomer and I know nothing about hyper-assistance.”

“You mean that Pitt never tells you anything about it?”

“About hyper-assistance? He doesn’t know himself.”

“Are you telling me no one knows?”

“Of course I’m not telling you that. The hyperspatialists know. Come on, Crile. Those who are supposed to know, know. Others don’t.”

“To all except the specialist few, it’s a secret, then.”

“Exactly.”

“Then you don’t really know that hyper-assistance is safe. Only the hyperspatialists know. How do you suppose they know?”

“I assume they’ve experimented.”

“You
assume
.”

“It’s a reasonable assumption. They assure us it’s safe.”

“And they never lie, I suppose.”

“They’ll be going, too. Besides, I’m
sure
they experimented.”

He looked at her out of narrowed eyes, “Now you’re
sure
. The Far Probe was
your
baby. Did they have life-forms aboard?”

“I was not involved with the actual procedures. I only dealt with the astronomical data that was gained.”

“You’re not answering my question about the life-forms.”

Insigna lost her patience. “Look, I don’t feel like being grilled endlessly, and the baby is beginning to be restless. I have a question or two myself. What do
you
plan to do? Are you coming along?”

“I don’t have to. The terms of the vote are that anyone who doesn’t want to come along doesn’t have to.”

“I know you don’t have to, but
will
you? Surely you don’t want to break up the family.”

She tried to smile as she said this, but it didn’t feel convincing.

Fisher said, slowly and a little grimly, “I also don’t want to leave the Solar System.”

“You would rather leave me? And Marlene?”

“Why would I have to leave Marlene? Even if you want to risk yourself on this wild scheme, must you risk the child?”

She said tightly, “If I go, Marlene goes. Get that through your head, Crile. Where would you take her? To some half-finished asteroidal Settlement?”

“Of course not. I’m from Earth and I can return there if I wish.”

“Return to a dying planet? Great.”

“It’s got some years of life left to it, I assure you.”

“Then why did you leave it?”

“I thought I’d be improving myself. I didn’t know that coming to Rotor would mean a one-way ticket to nowhere.”

“Not to nowhere,” Insigna burst out, tormented past endurance. “If you knew where we were going, you wouldn’t be so ready to turn back.”

“Why? Where is Rotor going?”

“To the stars.”

“To oblivion.”

They stared at each other, and Marlene, opening her eyes, emitted a soft mew of wakefulness. Fisher looked down at the baby and, with a softening of his tone, said, “Eugenia, we don’t have to split up. I certainly don’t want to leave Marlene. Or you either. Come with me.”

“To Earth?”

“Yes. Why not? I have friends there. Even now. As my wife and child, you’ll have no trouble getting in. Earth doesn’t worry much about ecological balance. We’ll be on a whole giant planet out there; not on a little stinking bubble in space.”

“Just on a whole giant bubble, enormously stinking. No no, never.”

“Let me take Marlene, then. If you find the voyage
worth the risk because you are an astronomer and want to study the Universe, that’s your business, but the baby should stay here in the Solar System, and be safe.”

“Safe on Earth? Don’t be ridiculous. Is that what this whole thing has been for? A device to take my baby?”

“
Our
baby.”

“
My
baby. You leave. I
want
you to leave, but you can’t touch my baby. You tell me I know Pitt, and, yes, I do. That means I can arrange to have you sent to the asteroids whether you want to go or not, and then you can find your own way back to your decomposing Earth. Now get out of my quarters and find your own place to sleep till you are sent away. When you let me know where you’ll be, I’ll send along your personal possessions. And don’t think you can come back. This place will be under guard.”

At the moment that Insigna said this, with the bitterness in her heart overflowing, she meant it. She might have pled with him, cajoled him, begged, argued. But she hadn’t. She had turned a harsh, unforgiving eye upon him and had sent him away.

And Fisher
did
leave. And she
did
send along his things. And he
did
refuse to come with Rotor. And he
was
sent away. And she supposed he
had
gone to Earth.

He was gone forever from her and from Marlene.

She had sent him away and he was gone forever.

Insigna sat there, deeply surprised at herself. She had never told the story to anyone, though she had lived with it almost every day for fourteen years. She had never dreamed of telling it to anyone. She had assumed that she would take it to the grave with her.

Not that it was disgraceful in any way—merely private.

And here she had told it—at length and without reserve—to her adolescent daughter, to someone who, until the moment she had begun talking, she had considered a child—a peculiarly hopeless child.

And that child now looked at her solemnly, out of her dark eyes—unblinking, owlishly adult, somehow—and finally said, “Then you did drive him away, didn’t you?”

“In a way, yes. But I was furious. He wanted to take
you
. To
Earth
.” She paused, then said tentatively, “You understand?”

Marlene asked, “Did you want me so much?”

Insigna said indignantly, “Certainly!” And then, under the calm gaze of those eyes, she stopped to think the unthinkable. Had she really wanted Marlene?

But then she calmly said, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Marlene shook her head and, for a moment, there was that sullen look on her face. “I think I probably wasn’t a charming baby. Perhaps
he
wanted me. Were you unhappy because he wanted me more than he wanted you? Did you keep me just because
he
wanted me?”

“What horrible things you’re saying. That’s not it at all,” said Insigna, not at all sure whether she believed that or not. There was getting to be no comfort in discussing these things with Marlene. More and more, Marlene was developing this dreadful way of cutting under the
skin. Insigna had noticed this before and had put it down to the occasional lucky blows of an unhappy child. But it was happening more and more often, and Marlene now seemed to be wielding the scalpel deliberately.

Insigna said, “Marlene. What made you think I had driven your father away? I had never said so, surely, or given you any reason to think so, have I?”

“I don’t really know how I know things, Mother. Sometimes you mention Father to me, or to someone else, and you always sound as though there’s something you regret, something you wish you could do over.”

“There is? I never feel that.”

“And little by little, as I get these impressions, they get clearer. It’s the way you talk, the way you look—”

Insigna gazed at her daughter intently, then said very suddenly, “What am I thinking?”

Marlene jumped slightly and then gave a short giggle. She was not a laugher, and that giggle was as far as ever she went—usually. She said, “That’s easy. You’re thinking that I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I don’t read minds. I just tell from words and sounds and expressions and movements. People just can’t keep what they think hidden. And I’ve watched them so long.”

“Why? I mean, why have you felt it necessary to watch them?”

“Because when I was a kid, everyone lied to me. They told me how sweet I was. Or they told you that when I was listening. They always had a look plastered all over them that said, ‘I don’t really think that at all.’ And they didn’t even know it was there. I couldn’t believe at first they didn’t know. But then I said to myself, ‘I guess it’s more comfortable for them to make believe they’re telling the truth.’ ”

Marlene paused and then abruptly asked her mother, “Why didn’t you tell Father where we were going?”

“I couldn’t. It was not my secret.”

“Perhaps if you had, he would have come with us.”

Insigna shook her head vigorously. “No, he wouldn’t. He had made up his mind to return to Earth.”

“But if you had told him, Mother, Commissioner Pitt wouldn’t have let him leave, would he? Father would have known too much.”

“Pitt wasn’t Commissioner then,” said Insigna with absent irrelevance. Then, with sudden vigor, “I wouldn’t have wanted him on those terms. Would you?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell how he would have been if he had stayed.”

“But I can tell.” Insigna felt as though she were burning again. Her mind went back to that last conversation and her last wild shout telling Fisher to go, that he
must
go. No, it had been no mistake. She wouldn’t have wanted him as a prisoner, an enforced member of Rotor. She hadn’t loved him
that
much. For that matter, she hadn’t hated him that much either.

And then she changed the subject quickly, allowing no time for her expression to give her away. “You upset Aurinel this afternoon. Why did you tell him Earth would be destroyed? He came to me about that and was very concerned.”

“All you had to do was to tell him that I was just a kid and no one listens to what a kid says. He would have believed that right away.”

Insigna ignored that. Maybe it was a good idea to say nothing in order to avoid the truth. “Do you really think Earth will be destroyed?”

“I do. You talk about Earth sometimes. You say, ‘Poor Earth.’ You almost always say, ‘Poor Earth.’ ”

Insigna felt herself flush. Did she really speak of Earth in those terms? She said, “Well, why not? It’s overcrowded, worn-out, full of hatred and famines and miseries. I’m sorry for the world. Poor Earth.”

“No, Mother. You don’t say it that way. When you say it—” Marlene held up her hand in a groping gesture, feeling for something, her fingertips just missing it.

“Well, Marlene?”

“It’s clear in my mind, but I don’t know how to put it in words.”

“Keep on trying. I must know.”

“The way you say it, I can’t help but think you feel guilty—as though it were your fault.”

“Why? What do you think I’ve done?”

“I heard you say it once when you were in the view room. You looked at Nemesis, and it seemed to me, then, that Nemesis was mixed up in it. So I asked the computer
what Nemesis meant and it told me. It’s something that relentlessly destroys, something that inflicts retribution.”

“That wasn’t the reason for the name,” cried Insigna.

“You named it,” said Marlene quietly, inexorably.

That was no secret, of course, any longer, once they had left the Solar System behind them. Insigna had then taken the credit for the discovery and for the name.

“It’s because I named it that I know that that wasn’t the reason for the name.”

“Then why do you feel guilty, Mother?”

(Silence—if you don’t want to tell the truth.)

Insigna said at last, “How do you think Earth will be destroyed?”

“I don’t know, but I think
you
know, Mother.”

“We’re speaking at cross-purposes, Marlene, and let’s let it go for now. What I want, though, is to make sure you understand that you are not to talk about any of this to anyone—not about your father, and not about this nonsense of Earth’s destruction.”

“If you don’t want me to, of course I won’t, but the destruction bit is not nonsense.”

“I say it is. We’ll define it as nonsense.”

Marlene nodded. “I think I’ll go view for a while,” she said with seeming indifference. “Then I’ll go to bed.”

“Good!” Insigna watched her daughter leave.

Guilty, thought Insigna. I feel guilty. I wear it on my face like a bright banner. Anyone who looks can see it.

No, not anyone. Just Marlene. She has the gift of doing so.

Marlene had to have something to compensate for all she didn’t get. Intelligence wasn’t enough. It didn’t make up sufficiently, so she had this gift of reading expression, intonation, and otherwise invisible bodily twitches, so that no secret was safe from her.

How long had she kept this dangerous attribute to herself? How long had she known about it? Was it something that grew stronger with age? Why did she allow it to emerge now, to peep out from behind the curtain she seemed to have drawn over it, and to use it as something with which to beat her mother?

Was it because Aurinel had rejected her, finally and
definitely, according to what she had seen in him? Was she striking out blindly in consequence?

Guilty, thought Insigna. Why shouldn’t I feel guilty? It is all my fault. I should have known from the start, from the instant of discovery—but I didn’t want to know.

How early had she known? From the moment she had named the star Nemesis? Had she felt what it was and what it meant, and had she named it appropriately without conscious thought?

When she had first spotted the star, it had been only the act of finding it that counted. There had been no room in her mind for anything but immortality. It was her own star, Insigna’s Star. She had been tempted to call it that. How glorious that had sounded, even as she had reluctantly avoided it with a hollow internal grimace of mock modesty. How unbearable it would have been now if she had fallen into that trap.