Instead she had been saddled with three vicious weaklings: sons that tormented each other—and her—with their backbiting and petty betrayals, their bootlicking and maneuvering for her favor. Even Karl, her precious golden Karl, the youngest and brightest of her sons—even he had not quite lived up to the Shanks name. Oh, he had come closer than his brothers, it was true: in defying her explicit wishes and entering the Studio Conservatory to pursue an Acting career, he was the only one of her children who had shown any spine at all.
It was her own fault: she had married badly. Her husband's company, Petrocal, had concealed its financial weakness until after the ceremony that had brought him and it under the aegis of the Shanks empire. If she had known how weak the company truly was, she never would have married him. The strength of one's corporation is the strength of one's character.
But when she looked upon Faith, she wondered if perhaps she had asked too much of Karl; perhaps the true steel of the Shanks character skips a generation. Perhaps the Shanks for which the world had been waiting was this golden-haired girl.
This was an outrageously romantic fantasy—the sort of smoke-and-moonbeam dream for which one of her children would have received, at the very least, a stern scolding—but it was, by all signs, possible; and the possibility alone had been intoxicating. For that one Saturday night, despite the dire tone of her conversation with Tan'elKoth, Avery Shanks came dangerously close to being happy.
But Sunday morning
Hari—Hari, I'm hurt. You have to help me. Hari, Hari, please .. .
And that innocently romantic dream for which Avery Shanks had allowed herself to hope—however briefly—had, in that moment, burned her heart to ashes. She knew, in the darkness beneath those smoldering embers, that this new wound to the Shanks future was somehow Michael-son's fault, as well.
The child had spent the rest of that day under sedation; whenever she woke up, the screaming and thrashing would begin again. Physician Lieberman had surmised that the convulsions were triggered by sudden stimulus: any kind of noise, or movement, or touch. She was calm enough while left by herself in a lightless, silent room—but Avery could not allow that. She had been through such confinements herself, as a child; the closet had been her father's standard punishment for misbehavior. Avery had thought herself kindhearted, when disciplining her own children, for forgoing the closet in favor of the belt.
Later Sunday night, as Avery had made ready to retire, she'd found herself thinking about the child: a nagging, recurrent image of Faith sobbing in the dark. Two cocktails, a double dose of Teravil, and even extended, athletic sex with Lexi, her current houseboy, while she waited for the Teravil to work its chemical massage upon her jangled nerves, had all failed to erase the imagined quiet hitching sobs.
Even if the child was crying, Avery had little reason to care, as she had been reminding herself over and over again through that long and grueling day. Despite being Karl's daughter, the child was of use, primarily, as a weapon against Michaelson. Faith had been damaged, probably irreparably, by her early upbringing in that perverse distortion of a proper household. If the child must pass a truncated existence under permanent sedation, little would be lost.
She refused to allow herself to become attached to the child. She had learned long ago that the sacrifice of sentiment is merely part of the cost of being Business. But the hollow mental echo of a child crying, in the dark, would not let her sleep.
Finally—with a sigh and a mental note to switch to a new brand of sedatives—she had disentangled herself from Lexi's muscular limbs, belted her dressing gown of hand-woven natural silk about her waist, and tramped down the stairs to take a pair of IR goggles from the mansion's first-floor security office. After canceling the lights in the upstairs hallway, she had opened the door to Faith's darkened room—and found the child peacefully asleep. As was the nurse: slumped in a chair with her own goggles pushed up onto her forehead. The room reeked of urine.
The child had wet the bed.
Three rigid steps into the room, Avery had thrown the whole strength of her arm behind a ringing slap that nearly dislocated the jaw of the sleeping nurse. The slap was followed by a clipped, precise stream of invective that had delineated in broad terms the nurse's myriad failures as an Artisan and as a human being, and had finished with a religious admonition: she instructed the nurse to get down on her knees and pray that she would still have a trade in the morning.
And of course all this unseemly commotion had woken the child, who began shrieking again, and when the nurse hurriedly ordered on the lights and tried to remove Faith from the tangle of soiled bedcovers, the child had yowled and clawed and scratched like a panicked cat, tearing away from the nurse and scrambling across the room
To throw her arms around Avery's legs, and hold on tight.
Avery was too astonished to do more than clutch at the child to keep her own balance. Eyes squeezed shut, face pressed hard against Avery's hip, Faith had quieted her shrieks to gentle sobs, and the thin wires of muscle in her trembling arms and legs had slackened toward some kind of ease, and Faith had spoken her only words since breakfast: a tiny, abject whisper.
"I'm sorry, Grandmaman," she'd murmured, barely audible. "I'm sorry .."
"Shh, Faith, shh," Avery had said awkwardly, the words stumbling from her half-numbed lips. Perhaps betrayed by the combination of alcohol and sedatives, she found herself suddenly overwhelmed, close to unexpected, astonishing tears. "It's all right, girl. It's all right."
"It's just so empty in here ..."
Faith's tears had soaked through the silk of Avery's dressing gown and touched her aged skin, warm as a kiss. The gown would be irreparably stained, but Avery had not been able to make herself push the child away; she could only stand, and hold Faith, and gnaw on her lower lip until the pain drove her own tears away.
By the time the sheets were changed, and Faith had been sponged off and dressed in a clean nightgown, it had become clear to Avery that the child was calm only when in her presence. Over the following days—as Avery fed Faith, and bathed her, and changed disposable diapers on her like an infant—Faith would sometimes speak disconnectedly, offering faint, ambiguous clues to the unguessable mental world into which she had retreated, and sometimes she even relaxed into a smile that was in this household more rare, and more precious, than any diamond.
Providing this constant care was a tremendous burden upon Avery—it interfered drastically with the conduct of SynTech business, as she could work only sporadically, over the net—and was one that she resented mightily. But she never took this out on the child; Faith needed her, depended on her, in a way no one ever had. Her own children had been reared by their governesses and the masters of their boarding schools—but Faith could not be so lightly shoved aside. There was no one else who could help her.
It was exhausting, physically and emotionally draining, and infuriating. It had even cost her the gratifying sexual gymnastics of Lexi: Last night, when Avery had collapsed into bed, still smelling of the antiseptic soap she'd used to wash Faith after the child's latest round of incontinence, he had made some childish remark about Avery's lack of interest in lovemaking. "It's that child," he'd said petulantly. "That downcaste creature has turned you into an old woman."
She'd looked at her hands, then at the ceiling, then finally at his artfully tanned, synthetically rugged face. "I'm tired of you, Lexi," she had said. "Go home."
His face took on the pinched, almost prim pucker that was how Lexi registered his displeasure. "All right," he said. "I'll be in my room."
"Only to pack." She laid her arm over her eyes to shut out the sight of his extraordinary physique. "You're fired. Severance will be credited to your account."
"You can't—"
"I can."
He had stood in the doorway, posing, and she couldn't help but take one last look. He really was a magnificent animal.
"You'll miss me," he had said. "You'll think of everything we've done together, and you'l
l be sorry."
She sighed. "I'm never sorry. Go pack."
"But you love me—"
"If you're still here when I wake up, I'll have you shot."
And that had been that: it would give her more time to devote to Faith.
She was intellectually honest enough to admit that she would not have so extended herself for one of her own children; she rationalized her effort by insisting privately that this was merely the most temporary thing—some kind of shock brought on by Faith's finding herself in such radically altered circumstances—and the doctors would either cure her, or her difficulty would pass on its own in a day or two.
She needn't have worried.
As the tech fitted the gunmetal circlet around Faith's brow and she began once again her spasms and guttural coughing moans, there came a subtle change in the quality of light. The light of the stark white room had taken on a faint peachy tone: a little warm, a little golden, a little like sunlight. Not at all the usual chilly glow of the overhead tubes.
The white electronic surf from the wallscreen's speakers faded into expectant silence. Avery slowly made herself turn to look at the screen, half flinching; she had somehow become ten years old again, afraid of a sudden slap from her father.
"Businessman Shanks. How pleasant to see you."
The voice was toneless, as mechanical as an antique voder. The face on the screen was desiccated, skeletal, skin of yellowed parchment crumpled over protruding bones, brown-traced teeth exposed by a mouth like a cut in a chunk of raw liver.
Avery swung herself around to face the screen squarely. "Who the devil are you?" she demanded. "How did you get this code?"
"That would be Faith on the table behind you, hm? Excellent."
One quick stride brought Avery to the wallscreen's keypad, and she stabbed the CANCEL sharply.
The face on the screen smiled.
She stabbed the key again, and again, and pounded it with her fist. Faith's moans became louder, more insistent.
"How did you get this code?" she snarled. How could anyone get this code? The screen had been operational for less than a day Avery herself didn't have its code! How could he override a cancel command? She made a fist once more, and raised it as though to smash the screen itself.
"I am hurt that you don't recognize me, Businessman. Hurt, and dismayed. I am Arturo Kollberg."
Her fist opened nervelessly, as did her mouth. "How—?"
"Thank you for looking after Faith for us. She'll be going now." "Going . . . ? You can't—"
"On the contrary," Kollberg said, and the screen flickered back to its detuned speckling snow.
Faith's moans turned to sobs. The technician stood at the head of the bed, the gunmetal tiara useless in his hands. Avery glared at the white screen, grinding her teeth.
Tentative knocking on the door—"Businessman?" came the hesitant voice of her head butler.
"Go away."
"Businessman, it's the Social Police. They say they've come for the young mistress."
Avery lowered her head.
Behind her, Faith began to scream.
2
Avery Shanks was not blind to the irony: The Social Police had arrived with a custody order ceding Faith to their control. She was forced to stand, blinking back helpless tears, as the Social Police loaded Faith into the rear of a riot van.
In the days that followed, she found herself thinking of Michaelson with unexpected envy. He, at least, had raged and fought and threatened. He had taken up the gauntlet of his life and cast it at the feet of his enemy, for love of this child.
Avery had done nothing but stand on the landing pad, and try to take her loss like a Businessman.
The image haunted her, awake and asleep: Faith on a psychward stretcher, anesthetized, under restraint. She should have been deep into unconsciousness, but instead she struggled in slow spastic motion against the padded sheath that bound her to the stretcher, and she moaned, deep and dark, in the back of her throat. Somehow, even through the blanket layers of drug that enwrapped her, Faith had known she was being taken from her home.
Can't you see what you're doing to her? Avery's heart had cried out, again and again, though the words never touched the bitter silence that sealed her lips. Can't you see that this child needs me?
Rising up her throat like vomit was the sickening conviction that a society where such things can happen is in some way fundamentally, ineradicably wrong. There was an old, old saying, going back hundreds of years—she had known of it since before she could remember—but only now did she understand how true it was.
A liberal, the old saying went, is a conservative who just got arrested.
The first day passed with no word. SynTech's legal staff could not help her here; Donner Morton, the head of the Leisure clan to which the Shanks were affiliated, promised to look into the matter, but the best even he was likely to be able to do was find out where Faith had been taken.
She didn't understand even the broadest outlines of whatever might be going on, but she was certain it all came back to Tan'elKoth. He had made the call that had given her Faith. He had been in the Curioseum on the night of the fire, and Pallas Ril had apparently died according to his precise prediction.
She knew where Faith must be now.
The second day passed, and the third. She ignored her duties as SynTech CEO; she abused her executives, snarled at her house staff, rejected all contact with her father and her surviving sons; she refused even to dress for dinner, taking meals in her room. She spent these days pestering her Business Tribune, aggravating her Leisure affiliate, filing motions in civil court, and shopping her story around the newsnet sites in hopes some influential reporter might interview her. In that short span she made herself a nuisance to the Leisure Congress, an embarrassment to the Business caste, and a humiliating liability to the Shanks chemical empire.
After three days, she flew to San Francisco personally, thinking to badger and bully her way into the Curioseum, and at least confront that treacherous creature face-to-face—but she found that the streets around the Studio had been blocked by barricades, manned by joint forces of the Social Police and Studio Security; even its airspace was restricted to official security traffic.
Without hesitation, she returned to her campaign.
She knew the damage she was doing, but the monster that rode behind her shoulder had her fully in its slimy grip; she was helpless to resist, and she drove herself even harder than she did anyone else. And so, when she was finally—inevitably—detained by the Social Police, it came as a decided relief to everyone concerned.
Even to her.
Never having had any dealings with the Social Police, Avery had no idea what to expect; arraignment, perhaps, on charges real or fabricated or both, perhaps detention without trial, interrogation, perhaps even torture—the uglier rumors of such things, which Avery had always dismissed as undercaste rubbish, are far more convincing, more threatening, when one is riding in the back of a riot van with one's wrists stripcuffed together behind one's back.
There had been no charges, so far, no warrant—she wasn't even officially under arrest. The officers who had come for her had allowed her to pack an overnight bag before leading her away. She suffered dreadful fantasies of simply disappearing, vanishing into the bowels of the legal system, never to be seen again.
But never in her wildest fantasy did she anticipate being delivered directly to the Studio Curioseum.
3
The Social Police pulled her swiftly but without violence through the Curioseum, lights blinking on as they entered each room and then blinking off behind them. They drew her through the riot of unfamiliar form and color and odor that was the arboretum: purple-veined chokeweed crashed against its restraining nets, chartreuse and pink-branched songtrees whistled shrilly, marsh-poppy pods jetted soporific pollen across their paths. They skirted the howls and snarls and chatter of the menagerie, and finally brought her into a large, bare rectangular room, its only
light what leaked through the broad, bright window at the far end.
Silhouetted against that light was a huge hulking man with hands clasped behind his enormous back, staring down through a broad plate glass window. I knew i4 she thought. By size alone, this could only be Tan'elKoth.
"I cannot imagine what you hope to gain by this," she snapped at the back of his head.
Eyes shifted in his ghostly reflection. "Businessman Shanks," he said in a half-whispered murmur, like a distant turbojet. "Thank you for coming." "Don't waste your courtesy on me, Professional—"
"Courtesy is never wasted. Please release her, officers—and then please leave us. The Businessman and I must confer in private."
"Confer—?" Avery began, astonished. "This is ridiculous. What have you done with Faith?"
"Officers? If you would be so kind?"
One of the officers buzzed, "I'm not sure this is a good idea, leaving you two alone."
"What, precisely, do you fear?" Tan'elKoth's voice sounded eminently reasonable, though still thin and whispery, as though he struggled with laryngitis. "The sole exit from these two rooms is the door through which you came. Or perhaps you think that I and the Businessman will concoct some nefarious conspiracy in your absence?"
"I'm afraid," came the toneless reply, "that he won't like it."
"Then go and ask him." Tan'elKoth turned toward them now, and there was something lumpish, disturbingly misshapen, in the curve of his silhouette. "Meanwhile, please do as I request. I believe that you are to comply with my wishes insofar as they do not conflict with your—" Avery got the impression that the ex-Emperor chose this next word with great care."—duty."