“I hate you,” she growled at her father.
“The feeling,” her father growled right back, “is mutual.”
“You can’t hate me! It’s not allowed!”
“Young lady,” Simon told her in an icy tone of voice, “the right to detest someone is a sword that cuts both ways. You have the manners of an illiterate fishwife. And if you don’t want to spend the next year without datachat privileges, you will speak in a civil tone and use polite language. The choice is entirely up to you.”
Lightning seethed in Yalena’s eyes, but she kept her acid tongue silent. She had learned, after losing several key battles, that when her father spoke to her in that particular tone, discretion was by far the wiser choice. Kafari took her seat and fastened her harness in place. Simon did the same, then touched controls and lifted into the cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day, with honey pouring across the rose-toned shoulders of the Damisi Mountains, to spill its way down across the Adero floodplain in golden ripples. The flight was a silent one, with only the rush of wind past the aircar’s canopy to break the chill.
The crowding elbows of Maze Gap flashed past, then they were headed down Klameth Canyon, following the twisting route to Chakula Ranch, which her parents had finally managed to rebuild. The house was in a different place, but the ponds were functional again and the Malinese miners were buying pearls by the hundred-weight, as the war had sent Mali’s economy into a boom that apparently had no end in sight. Jefferson, on the other hand…
Some things, Kafari didn’t want to think about too deeply.
The ruination of Jefferson’s economy was one of them.
Simon brought them down in a neat and skilled landing, killing the engine and popping the hatches. Kafari unhooked herself and waited while Yalena ripped loose the catches on her own harness. She slammed her way out of the aircar and glared at the crowd of grandparents, aunt, uncles, and cousins who’d streamed across the yard to greet her. She wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip.
“Ew, it stinks. Like pigs crapped everywhere.” She was glaring, not at the farm buildings, but directly at her relatives.
“Yalena!” Simon glowered. “That is not language fit for polite company. Do it again and you’ll lose a solid month of chat.”
Smiles of welcome had frozen in place. Kafari clenched her teeth and said, “Yalena, say hello to your family. Politely.”
A swift glare of defiance shifted into sullen disgust. “Hello,” she muttered.
Kafari’s mother, expression stricken with uncertainty and dismay, said, “Happy Birthday, Yalena. We’re very glad you could be with us, today.”
“I’m not!”
“Well, child,” Kafari’s father said with a jovial grin that managed to convey a rather feral threat, “you’re more than welcome to walk home again. Of course, it might take you quite a while, in those shoes.”
Yalena’s mouth fell open. “Walk? All the way to Nineveh? Are you like totally stupid?”
“No, but you’re totally rude.” He brushed past his grandchild to give Kafari a warm hug. “It’s good to see you, honey.” She didn’t miss the emphasis. From the look on Yalena’s face, neither had she. Kafari knew a moment of stinging guilt. Her father clasped Simon’s hand, shaking it firmly. “Don’t see enough of you, son. Come and see us more often.”
“I may just do that,” Simon said quietly.
“You can leave that,” he gestured dismissively at his gaping granddaughter, “where you found it, unless it learns to speak with a little more respect. Come inside, folks, come inside, there’s plenty of time to catch up on the news without standing out here all day.”
He drew Kafari’s arm through his, smiling down at her, and literally ignored his granddaughter, whose special day this was supposed to be. Kafari’s eyes stung with swift tears as guilt and remorse tore through her heart, witnessing the confused hurt in her daughter’s eyes. Yalena was just a child. A beautiful and intelligent little girl, who had no real chance against the determined, incessant onslaught of propaganda hurled at her by teachers, entertainers, and so-called news reporters who wouldn’t have known how to report honestly if their immortal souls had depended on it.
She and Simon had tried to undo the ongoing damage. Had tried again and again. Were still trying. And nothing worked. Nothing. Nor would it, not when every other significant adult in her life was telling her — over and over — that she could demand anything and get it; that she could rat out her parents or anyone else for an entire laundry list of suspicious behaviors or beliefs and be rewarded lavishly; and that she held an inalienable right to do whatever she chose, whenever she chose and somebody else would dutifully have to pay for it. Kafari knew only too well that Yalena received extra social conditioning simply because she was their child. It suited POPPA to plant a snake inside their home, to use as a threat and a spy, and it enraged Kafari endlessly that they did so without a single moment’s remorse over the damage they inflicted daily on a little girl.
Kafari’s father gave her arm a gentle squeeze and a slight shake of his head, trying to convey without words that none of this mess was her fault. It helped. A little. She was grateful for that much. She glanced back long enough to reassure herself that Simon was keeping an eye on their daughter, who was glaring at her cousins. They regarded her with cold hostility and open disgust. That the feelings were mutual was painfully obvious. Her mother, who had coped with more heartaches that Kafari would ever be able to claim, waded in like a soldier going into battle, taking charge of the ghastly situation with brisk efficiency.
“Everybody goes to the house. Come on, you mangy lot, there’s punch and cookies waiting and plenty of games to play before lunch.”
Yalena stalked with regal disdain past her cousins, as though wading through a pile of something putrid. Her cousins, falling in behind her, lost no time in mocking the birthday girl behind her back, pointing their noses at the sky, marching with exaggerated mimicry. If Yalena turned around, she’d get a nice dose of unpleasant reality. If Kafari knew her nieces and nephews, Yalena would get several doses of reality before it was time to leave, all of them painful.
Watching the ugly dynamics, Kafari hated POPPA with a violence that scared her. The sole comfort she derived from the situation was the realization that POPPA wasn’t succeeding in totally indoctrinating all of Jefferson’s children. Yalena’s cousins might be trapped in a POPPA-run school all day, but living — and working — on a farm provided its own strong and daily antidote to idiocy. When it came to milking cows, gathering eggs from nest boxes, or any of the thousand other chores necessary to keeping a farm operational, platitudes like “no child should be forced to do anything he or she doesn’t want to do” earned exactly what they merited: derisive contempt.
If you didn’t milk a cow, pretty soon you had no milk. And if you weren’t careful, no cow, either. There was literally nothing in Yalena’s world to give her that kind of perspective. Kafari thought seriously about turning Yalena over to her parents this summer. If not for Simon’s position, she’d have plunked Yalena down on the farm already, come hell or high water.