Mother?
Yes, Lucy?
Who was my father?
Oh, he was a brave man, a clever man. We had a great adventure one time, he and I and some others.
Perhaps she had shown courage enough in pushing the quest this far. Perhaps it was time to show prudence, and give the whole thing up.
But what, then, of justice?
She grew aware of a soft tapping at her door and thought it might have been ongoing for some time. Rising abruptly from the desk, she went to the door and threw it open.
It was Billy Chins. He held a message packet in his hand and had his data ‘face tucked under one arm.
“It’s late, Billy,” she said and started to close the door.
“Please, missy,” he said, thrusting his hand out. “This come when you and sahb on Starwalk. This tok address him you, from home. I forget till now, but now I think, maybe mama come home and this tell you so?”
Méarana did not believe that, but stranger things have happened and she snatched the message from his hand in a spasm of hope and broke the seal. Billy watched with half an eye while he set his reader screen on her desk and woke it.
The message was from Hang Tenbottles and it contained only the unabridged edition of Commonwealth Days that her mother had read. It had been peeled off the master copy at the Archives at Sannaklar on Friesing’s World. Weirdly disappointed—she had had no right to expect anything more—she tossed it to her desk. “And what are you doing, boy?” she snapped. Billy had had no cause to raise her hopes even so unwittingly as he had.
He was setting up his’ face as a holo stage. “Oh, please, Mistress Harp. Sahb Donovan, he larim—I mean, he ‘give up.’Ammasmarpaña krana. He is kaput! No more help you find mama-meri. So he no laikim tru for see this. I show you, even if he beat me for such.”
He had activated the stage and a holo image now hovered above it. Méarana crossed over and studied it.
“What is it, Billy?”
“Is dibby from Sofwari left by Harpaloon. Make no meaning, alla code numbers. But Billy smart. He have second dibby, come from Dancing Vrouw, and I think, Billy, I say, why not run matchim up? So I find him the Vrouw data in the Harpaloon dibby.” He beamed.
Méarana sighed with exasperation. ‘I’m sure the dibby Sofwari left on Harpaloon included the data he had already harvested on Bangtop and Dancing Vrouw.”
Billy’s head bounced enthusiastically. “And Thistlewaite. Even earlier files from other places. But, missy, tissue bank on Vrouw, she no use code numbers, so I translate some of dibby. Find code numbers mean for birth-worlds, for people-groups, and so. Then put those into data columns for Bangtop and Thistlewaite and find more by the crossing of references. Then I do same with Bangtop data from Rinty. Is Sofwari find thirty-two people-groups!”
“I’m sure that is very interesting, but…”
“So I make map by birth-worlds of different groups. Also other maps, time plots, frequency plots, correlation plots, and so cetera. Billy hard worker. But they tell no nothing. See here.”
Méarana saw that the holo was a map of the Periphery. One corner of the map bore a legend:
Group 1:
Clanmother: Anandi
Origin: ca. 2000 years bp
Central Locus: Megranome
In the holomap, Megranome glowed bright red. Abyalon, Old’ Saken, and several worlds in the Cynthia Cluster were orange; Die Bold and Friesing’s World, yellowish; and Venishànghai and scattered other worlds were blue.
“What means it, Lady Harp?” Billy implored. “Billy, he make sense of data, but not make sense of sense.”
Méarana laughed at his syntax, but then reflected that the tangle had gotten it straight. The dibby meant the map; but what did the map mean? She flicked through some of the other groups: Kadrina, Khyaddy, Geeda…All female names, alphabetically ordered not according to Gaelactic but according to customary usages on some of the Old Planets. Most showed a “central locus” within the Old Planets shading off to other worlds. A few bore the note “Origin Before Cleansing.”
She recalled that Sofwari had been doing genealogy. She studied the map now showing. “This map means that 7200 years ago, some woman named Taruna—Now, how could he know her name? Right. Someone he code-named Taruna lived somewhere across the Rift, and her descendants wound up on Old ‘Saken and a few other worlds, probably during the Cleansing, and from there later descendants emigrated and settled on still other worlds. The color codes seem to indicate where Taruna’s mighty chondrians appeared most frequently.”
Billy’s expression showed bewilderment. “But…who cares?”
Méarana thought about the way a drop of dye spread through a glass of water. “I think it shows patterns of migration and settlement.”
“We know him yet. Old Planets, numma one settle; then people walkabout other pless.”
“Billy, when they did ‘walkabout,’ they sometimes found people on the new worlds. Where did those people come from?”
The khitmutgar stammered a bit and Méarana said, “Look…See Lummila here? Her—what was the other term? ‘Little thread shapes.’ Her little thread shapes are 8100 years old, which means she lived Before Cleansing. But where are most of her descendants? On Venishànghai, other worlds in the Jen-jen, and on New Chennai, Hawthorne Rose, and Agadar. So the prehumans planted us on more worlds than the Old Planets. But the Old Planets rediscovered star-sliding first and started the Reconnection.”
“Okay, mistress. But was Dao Chetty cleansed Old Earth and settled poor Terries across the Rift.”
“That’s what everyone still believes, but…Well, never mind.” She copied the files to her own machine. She wasn’t sure why Mother had found this interesting. She wondered which of the “clanmothers” she herself descended from.
Billy hesitated, and shifted from foot to foot.
“Yes, Billy, was there something else?”
“I tingting me…What is you say, I think… maybe is got clue that dibby. Billy don’t know what, but maybe you see him the clue? Maybe say where mama-meri go?”
Méarana sighed, folded the projector fibers, and handed Billy his deactivated screen. “Maybe Greystroke can figure it out.”
Billy still did not move. “Billy says no wrong, you. But what mean him your mama when Greystroke find her, not her pickny-meri. What mean him you?”
Méarana’s lips thinned and she stood bolt upright. “Are you scolding me? How dare you lecture me on duty!”
The khitmutgar bowed his head. “Mistress Harp. Who know duty more than Billy Chins?”
“Sahb Donovan is waiting for a flight to Alabaster, and you have to go with him. Do you expect me to roam Lafrontera, to go into the Wild—alone?”
Billy gathered himself and stood to attention, touching his forehead with the back of his hand. “No, memsahb! Billy Chins go with! You better go-with man than Donovan.”
The announcement so surprised the harper that she sank slowly to her desk chair, strangely touched by the little man’s offer. “I thought Donovan possessed your life, and if you left him you would have to kill yourself.”
Billy shrugged. “Atangku much complex custom. You think mama-meri you go into the Wild, yes?”
“Yes, I think she went into the Wild.”
“And we go follow, we die that place?”