“Mother?” Katsu said.
Vidya cautiously reached out a trembling hand to touch Katsu’s face. “My baby Katsu. No longer a baby.”
Katsu’s face was impassive, unreadable as always. Prasad opened his mouth to speak and found he had to force the words out.
“Vidya, what happened to you? Where did you go?”
Vidya looked up at him, anger still hard in her eyes. “I should ask the same. You disappeared. I looked everywhere for you, but I couldn’t find you even after seven days. Why didn’t you come back? You left me to raise-”
“It was you who disappeared,” Prasad interrupted. “I came back after I found Katsu, but the apartment was empty.”
Vidya’s face had gone an unhealthy ashen. “You came back after I left? How did you find Katsu? Have you been here all this time? How did you get here?”
“That is a story.”
“Then tell it!” Vidya commanded.
Prasad licked dry lips and shot Katsu a glance. It occurred to him that Katsu had never asked to know how the two of them had come here. He would tell the story for mother and daughter both.
“You remember when we found Katsu’s cradle empty,” Prasad began. “I was frantic after losing our other children to the Unity. I couldn’t sit and wait for the guard to try to find her, so I went out.”
“This I know,” Vidya said impatiently. “Tell me what I do not know.”
“I am trying,” Prasad said, a bit annoyed. “You must have patience. You remember also I was working as a garbage collector. Many people owed me favors for looking the other way while they dumped…things into my truck. I called in every one I had until someone gave me an address.”
“Why did you not come to get me?” Vidya demanded.
“I was too angry to think of it,” Prasad admitted. “I went to the place-a warehouse-and heard Katsu crying inside it. I did not think. I smashed through one of the doors like one of our kine would have done. Five men were there with Katsu.”
Katsu, still kneeling at Vidya’s feet, did not react.
“I fought them like a rabid dog, but they beat me senseless. I woke here, in this base.”
“They did not kill you?” Vidya said.
“Obviously not,” Prasad replied. “The men figured out I was Katsu’s father and they thought I might be valuable to their buyer as well, so they brought me here with her. Dr. Say told me-have you met her yet?”
Vidya shook her head. “I met the man named Max Garinn and I met the man with pale hair and a deep voice.”
“Dr. Kri,” Prasad supplied. “He and Dr. Say are in charge of the base and the project. At any rate, when I woke, Dr. Say told me I had been unconscious for ten days. Katsu was fine.”
“And who were the men who kidnapped Katsu?” Vidya’s hand had trailed down to Katsu’s hair again. Katsu sat like statue.
“Black market slavers,” Prasad said. “Kri told me he and Say had originally arranged to buy Katsu because they were told she was an orphan and because they needed Silent. The slavers brought me along, too, hoping to get more money. Kri said I was almost dead.”
“So you were rescued by people who buy infants on the black market,” Vidya spat.
This reunion wasn’t going as Prasad had imagined it. He could hear the anger in Vidya’s voice, see it in her rigid posture. “It wasn’t like that,” he replied uneasily. “They saved my life.”
“Your life,” Vidya pointed out, “wouldn’t have been in jeopardy if they hadn’t wanted to buy Katsu in the first place. These people hired thugs to kidnap our daughter, and you’re living with them!”
Prasad shook his head. “I’m not explaining it well. The slavers approached Kri and Say first. When they heard the slavers had a baby for…for sale, they agreed to buy.”
“And that makes it better?” Vidya said.
“You’ve changed, Vidya,” Prasad said softly. “You’ve hardened.”
“And your brain has softened. You work for the people who stole our child.”
Anger stiffened Prasad’s jaw. “It was that or live in squalor and let the Unity take Katsu on her tenth birthday. Now our daughter is seventeen years old, and she is still with her father.”
Vidya looked like she wanted to reply, then made her mouth a hard line. Katsu still hadn’t moved. Prasad’s throat thickened.
“I missed you,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t know if you were living or dead. Every day I watched Katsu grow to look like you and I wondered. Now you are here and we are fighting. Please. What happened?”
Vidya slumped back in her chair. The anger slipped from her face and her chin trembled.
“When you didn’t come back, I became afraid whoever took you and Katsu would next come for me. So I ran,” Vidya said. She reached down and gently stroked a lock of Katsu’s hair. “Where did you go?” Prasad asked.
Vidya barked a short, harsh laugh. “To what I thought would be a safe place. It took me seventeen years to realize it was not. You have a son, my husband.”
“I have two,” Prasad said, confused. “We had to give-”
Vidya cut him off with a gesture. “I was pregnant when you left. I have a daughter named Katsu, and you have a son named Sejal.”
“I do? A son? Where is he?” Prasad found he was on his feet, heart thudding. “What does he look like? Didn’t you bring him?”
“He is no longer on Rust,” Vidya replied.
“But he is Silent,” Katsu put in.
Both Prasad and Vidya turned toward her. “What?” Prasad said.
“How did you know that?” Vidya asked at the same time.
“He reaches people through the Dream,” Katsu said calmly. “He touches them and changes them. And he walks the Dream.”
“How do you know this?” Vidya repeated as Prasad sank back into his chair.
“I have seen him in the Dream,” Katsu said. “But he does not know me.”
“Your daughter is one of the few Silent who can enter the Dream without drugs,” Prasad said proudly. “She is also an expert on Rustic marine biology.”
“I see,” Vidya said. She passed a hand over her face. “This is not how I envisioned meeting you again, my husband.”
“Nor I, my wife.” Impulsively, Prasad leaned forward and took her cool hand in his. He squeezed twice. Vidya’s jaw firmed, then trembled.
“I am so angry at you,” she choked. “But I have also missed you. You and Katsu both.”
“How did you find us?” Prasad asked, still holding her hand.
Vidya took a deep breath. Her back straightened and Prasad released her. “That is a long story as well.” She told what had happened after Katsu and Prasad’s disappearance, how she discovered she was pregnant with Sejal and how she changed her name. Guilt and regret at not having been at his wife’s side washed over Prasad. How hard it must have been for her, while he, her husband, had lived in luxury with the daughter she thought dead.
“I did not wish to have another Silent child,” Vidya said. “I found a genegineer-Max Garinn. He said he could use a retrovirus to make Sejal non-Silent. And it seemed he did. Sejal was tested twice for Silence, once at birth and once at age two. Both tests came back negative. But I have since learned that he is indeed Silent, as Katsu says.”
She continued with the story, and Prasad learned how Vidya had built the neighborhood. He blinked as she related in a dispassionate voice how she had spoken to the Children of Irfan and learned of Sejal’s activities in the market. An irrational bit of anger flashed within him. What kind of mother would allow such a thing?
And, whispered a conflicting voice, what kind of father would abandon his son to do it?
“I sent Sejal to the monastery,” Vidya finished. Katsu remained impassive at her feet. “I stayed behind because I had questions. I have many contacts now, and I used them to track down Max Garinn, though it took many days. When I told him who I was, he brought me here. Dr. Kri was extremely excited to see me.”