Kafari said, rather stupidly, “How did you know?”
Then burst into tears.
Her mother guided her into the house. She was so blinded by salt water, she couldn’t even see what her feet were stumbling over. Then she was on the sofa, with her mother’s arms around her. She huddled against a warm, safe shoulder while her mother rocked her. Fifteen years of fear came pouring out, mixed up with two agonizing years alone, trying to raise a hellion with a poisoned mind while Simon was on Vishnu, learning how to walk, again.
When Kafari’s paroxysm of grief finally eased, her father appeared with a tumbler of Scotch. She was trembling so badly she couldn’t even hold the glass. “Steady,” her father said quietly, holding the rim to her lips. She gulped the burning stuff down. It helped. Or maybe the fire in her throat and gullet just distracted her enough to regain control of herself. Her mother was brushing wet hair back from Kafari’s face, drying the tears with one corner of the apron she’d worn every day of Kafari’s life. Kafari hadn’t realized how much silver there was in her mother’s hair, how deep the sun-plowed furrows in her father’s face had become.
She met her mother’s worried gaze. “Was I ever as much trouble as Yalena is?”
The twinkle in her mother’s eyes surprised her. “Oh, no. That must come from her father’s side. Eh, Zak?” She winked at her husband, who grumbled, “Well, I mind the time you set fire to the pearl shed, and the day you pushed young Regis Blackpole out of the dairy-barn loft and I had to pay for his crowns and bridgework, and the note we got from Vishnu, that you’d landed in the hospital with kraali fever, and of course there were those worrisome days when you were sleeping with an off-world stranger and hadn’t made up your mind yet to marry him…”
Kafari let out an indignant snort. Then bit one lip. “Mom, Dad… what am I going to do?”
“What tipped the scales, today?”
She told them. Zak Camar’s jaw muscles jumped. Her mother’s expression would have given a rabid jaglitch pause, which gave her a fair idea what her own had been, in the apartment.
“How bad was the snap?” her mother asked quietly.
“One slap worth’s. A hard one. She may bruise.”
Her father snorted. “She’ll mend. Mind, I’m not in favor of belting your kids. But she needed that slap, my girl, needed it more than even you probably realize.”
“And if she reports it—”
“I’ll give her something else to report.” Then he touched her wet cheek with one gentle fingertip, lifted her chin back up where it belonged. “Her father would’ve done the same thing and he’d have been right, too. When a child’s been brainwashed for as long as they’ve had Yalena, you can’t wake ’em up with hugs and flowers.”
“How do you wake them up?” Kafari asked in a low, weary voice. “We’ve tried everything.”
“Except slapping her,” Kafari’s mother said drolly. “Who knows? Maybe she’ll be so shocked, she’ll go onto the datachats and find out for herself?”
It was too hard to hope. She couldn’t bear to be disappointed again. “I’d better go back,” was all she said. “There’s going to be an ugly mood in town, over this. Yalena is just young and stupid enough to go out and be part of it.”
Worry flashed in the glances her parents exchanged. “All right,” her mother said softly. “Call if you need anything. Including a place to hide.”
Kafari just nodded. Then hugged them both tightly, wishing she didn’t have to let go, again. She finally climbed into her Airdart and headed back to town in the gathering gloom of early evening.
II
Yalena didn’t know what to do.
Her face still smarted from that shocking slap. Worse, she didn’t know what to think. Her mother’s angry revelations had stunned her far more deeply than the palm across her cheek. What if… She gulped. What if her mother was right? About the Hancock family? About everything? She realized there was one way to settle her uncertainties over the Hancock massacre.
She sat down at her datascreen and tried to get into the main Granger chats. They were jammed. So badly, she couldn’t get through to the main datahub that carried several of the Granger chats. She finally set her system to auto-retry, and even that took nearly half an hour of constant attempts before her request went through.
Once in, she went straight to Anish Balin’s chat. It was hard — the most difficult and painful thing she had ever done — to watch the recording. It looked genuine, not some kind of mock-up. She sat very still, scarcely breathing, as that one recording shook her carefully constructed beliefs to pieces. When her wrist-comm beeped, Yalena jumped in the chair, heart pounding. Her fingertips shook.
“Yalena,” she said, scarcely recognizing the croak that emerged as her own voice.
“It’s Ami-Lynn. Are you watching the news? Oh, Yalena, it’s horrible! Just horrible. Those poor boys…”
She heard her own voice, tinny and strange, say, “Ami-Lynn, sign into Anish Balin’s datachat. Just do it. Then call me back.”
Twenty-three minutes later, her comm beeped again.
“Is this stuff real?” She sounded shaken, like she’d been crying, or still was.
“Yes,” Yalena whispered. “I really think it is. Mom…” She had to gulp. “Mom knows Dinny Ghamal. And his mother. Why isn’t Pol Jankovitch or anybody else telling people the truth? And nobody’s mentioned that Dinny and his mother helped save President Lendan’s life, during the war. They got Presidential Medallions. So did my mom. Ami-Lynn, I’m going downtown. There’s a Granger protest march, this afternoon. I want to find out the truth. And I want to talk to some Grangers, ask them… I don’t know what, exactly, but I’ve got to find out what’s really going on.”
There was a long pause, then Ami-Lynn said, “I’m going, too. And I’m going to call Charmaine.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t. And I probably shouldn’t. My parents would throw a fit and ground me for a year. But I don’t like this, Yalena. I don’t like it and I don’t understand it and I’m scared to death of what I might find out. But I’ve got to know the truth. So do you. And so will Charmaine.”
Yalena drew a deep, uneasy breath. “Okay. Where do you want to meet up?”
“It’s going to be crowded, down there. How about we meet up at Charmaine’s house? She’s pretty close to the downtown.”
“Good idea. I’ll meet you there.”
Yalena turned off her datascreen, made sure her wrist-comm was securely fastened, then pulled her scooter out, locked up the apartment, and headed for Charmaine’s house. She had no idea what she was about to find out. She didn’t have the slightest clue as to what she would do about it, if her mother and that security tape were right. Her mother still insisted that POPPA had sabotaged her father’s aircar, trying to kill him with that crash. Yalena had refused to believe it. Still didn’t want to believe it. But she was no longer a trusting baby, either.
One way or another, Yalena intended to find out.
Chapter Nineteen
I
Trouble has erupted again.
At 2030 hours, I receive an urgent call from President Zeloc, who does not bother to go through Sar Gremian, this time. Given the disturbance I am tracking through the heart of Madison, by way of law-enforcement broadcasts and news crews, his wild-eyed demeanor is not surprising. His order is no more than I expected to hear.