He looked at Grant, at Grant with the shields up again, with that slight, mocking smile that was Grant's way of defying fate, the universe, and Reseune Administration. For a moment he felt both fortunate and terrified.
As if for the first time everything that had been going away from him had stopped and trembled on the edge of reversing itself.
"Sure," he said. "Sure." He caught Grant's arm and steered him out the door. "If you could make headway with Yanni Schwartz you could hire out by the hour. Probably everybody in the Wing could use your services."
"Un-unh. No. I'm in regular employment, thanks." People were staring. He dropped Grant's arm. And realized half the Wing must have heard him shouting at Grant. And was looking for signs of damage.
They were a source of gossip for a whole host of reasons. And now there was a new one.
That would get back to Yanni too.
viii
There were new things all the time. Nelly took Ari to the store in the North Wing, and they came back with packages. That was fun. She bought Nelly things too, and Nelly was so happy it made her feel good, to see Nelly with a new suit and looking pretty and so proud.
But Nelly was not maman. She liked it at first when Nelly put her arms around her, but Nelly always was Nelly, that was all, and all at once one night she felt so empty when Nelly did that. She didn't tell Nelly, because Nelly was telling her a story. But after that it was harder and harder to put up with Nelly holding her, when maman was gone. So she fidgeted down and sat on the floor for her stories, which Nelly seemed to think was all right.
Seely was just nobody. She teased Seely sometimes, but Seely never laughed. And that felt awful. So she left Seely alone, except when she asked him for a soft drink or a cookie. Which she got more of than maman would like. So she tried to be good and not to ask, and to eat vegetables and not have so much sugar. It's not good for you, maman would say. And anything maman said was something she tried to remember and keep doing, because everything of maman's she forgot was like forgetting maman. So she ate the damn vegetables and got a lump in her throat because some of them tasted awful, all messed up with white creamy stuff. Ugh. They made her want to throw up. But she did it because of maman and it made her so sad and so mad at the same time she felt like crying.
But if she did cry she went to her room and shut the door, and wiped her eyes and washed her face before she came out again, because she was not going to snivel.
She wanted somebody to play with but she didn't want it to be Sam. Sam knew her too well. Sam would know about her maman. And she would beat his face in, because she couldn't stand him looking at her with his face that never showed anything.
So when Nelly asked did she want to go back to playschool she said all right if Sam wasn't there.
"I don't know who there is, then," Nelly said.
"Then I'll go by myself," she said. "Let's go do the gym. All right?"
So Nelly took her. And they fed the fish and she played in the sandbox, but the sandbox was no fun by herself; and Nelly was not good at making buildings. So they just fed the fish and took walks and played on the playground and in the gym.
There was tapestudy. And a lot of the grown-ups did lessons with her. She learned a lot of things. She lay there in her bed at night with her head so full of new things she had trouble thinking of maman and Ollie.
Uncle Denys was right. It hurt less, day by day. That was the thing that scared her. Because if it didn't hurt the mad was harder to keep. So she bit her lip till it hurt and tried to keep it that way.
There was a children's party. She saw Amy there. Amy ran and got behind sera Peterson and acted like a baby. She remembered why she had wanted to hit Amy. The rest of the kids just stared at her a lot and sera Peterson told them they had to play with her.
They weren't happy about it. She could tell. There was Kate and Tommy and a kid named Pat, and Amy, who cried and snuffled over in the corner. Sam was there too. Sam came out from the others and said Hello, Ari. Sam was the only friendly one. So she said Hello, Sam. And wished she could go home, but Nelly had gone in the kitchen to have tea with sera Peterson's azi, and Nelly was having a good time.
So she went over and sat down and played their game, which was a dice game, and you moved around a board, which was Union space. You got money. All right. She played it, and everybody got to arguing and laughing and teasing each other again. Except Amy. Except they teased each other and not her. But that was all right. She learned their game. She started getting money. Sam was the luckiest one with the dice, but Sam was too careful with his money and Tommy was too reckless. "I'll sell you a station," she said. And Amy bought it for most of what Amy had. So Amy charged a lot and Ari just charged less. And what Amy had bought was off at the edge anyway. So Ari got more money and Amy got mad. And nobody wanted to trade for Amy's station, but Ari offered to buy it back, not for what Amy wanted for it.
So Amy took it and bought ships. And Ari raised her prices a little.
Amy sniveled. And pretty soon she was in trouble again, because Ari kept beating her by using her money to buy up cargoes and keeping a surplus of the only things Amy could get because stupid Amy kept coming to herstations instead of sticking to Tommy's. Amy wanted a fight. Amy got a fight. But she didn't want Amy to lose real soon and ruin the game, so she told Amy what she ought to do.
Amy got real mad then. And sniveled some more.
She didn't take the advice either.
So Ari got her in trouble and took all but one of her ships. Then the last one. By that time she had a way to win. But everybody else was looking unhappy and nobody was teasing anybody, except Amy left the table crying.
Nobody said anything. They all looked at Amy. They all looked at her like they wanted not to be there.
She was going to win. Except Sam didn't know it. So she said, "Sam, you can have my pieces."
And she went and got Nelly in the kitchen and said she wanted to go home. Nelly looked worried, then, and stopped having fun with Corrie, and they went home.
She moped around the rest of the day, being lonely. And mad. Which was fine. She thought of maman then. And missed Ollie. Even Phaedra.
And thought if Valery had been there he would not have been so stupid.
"What's the matter?" uncle Denys asked that evening. He was very kind about it. "Ari, dear, what happened at the party? What did they do?"
She could Disappear them all if she said they had a fight. Maybe they would anyway. She wasn't sure. At least Amy and Kate were still around, even if they were stupid.
"Uncle Denys, where did Valery go?"
"Valery Schwartz? His maman got transferred. They moved, that's all. You still remember Valery?"
"Can he come back?"
"I don't know, dear. I don't think so. His maman has a job to do. What happened at the party?"
"I just got bored. They're not much fun. Where did maman and Ollie go? What station?"
"To Fargone."
"I'm going to send maman and Ollie a letter." She had seen mail in maman's office. She had never thought of doing that. But she thought that would get to maman's office at the other place. At Fargone.
"All right. I'm sure they'd like that."
Sometimes she thought maman and Ollie weren't really anywhere. But uncle Denys talked like they were, and they were all right. That made her feel better, but it made her wonder why maman never even called on the phone.
"Can you call Fargone?"
"No," uncle Denys said. "It's faster for a ship to go. A letter gets there much faster than a phone call. In months, not years."