Asylum

 

David Whitmarsh

 

 

 

“She was reported missing from the half-gee terrace at the north end this morning,” Tulltjänsterman Harald Pedersen told Magistrat Yelena Moller as he ushered a girl into her office, an adolescent female, with a delicate nut-brown complexion framed by an abundance of unruly dark hair.  With a defiant expression, the girl plopped herself down in the chair facing the Magistrat. Pedersen wrung his hands. He spoke with an apologetic tone, in English, presumably for the benefit of his charge.  “She  was found wandering in Meridian Park an hour ago.”

“Sounds simple enough, Harald,” Yelena frowned. “Why have you brought her to me?”

“She wants to claim asylum. Says she’s an unwilling passenger on her mother’s ship.” He tapped and gestured at his pad, and the case file manifested on Yelena’s desk.

Asylum. Paperwork. A determination to be made. Yelena’s hopes of getting away early were evaporating. “Thank you, Harald. I’ll take it from here.”

The officer nodded and slipped out, closing the door delicately behind him. Yelena looked across her desk at the cause of her inconvenience. “Your name?”

“Amarante Sauveterre.”

She glanced at the file. “The missing persons report has you as Amarante Voland.”

“Voland is my mother. I choose to use my father’s name.”

“And you are sixteen years old, subjective.”

“Eighteen.”

Yelena sighed. As an adolescent Ms Sauveterre would have to demonstrate the need to escape physical or psychological harm to avoid being returned to her mother’s ship. A complex investigation she could hand over to social services. As an adult, Amarante’s file remained squarely on Yelena’s desk. The first problem was to establish the truth of her age.

“Date of birth?”

“Fifteenth of April twenty-one thirty-six CE.”

The numbers flew from Yelena’s ears to her fingers without thought, until her fingertip hovered over the one. “Twenty-one thirty-six?”

The girl smiled and nodded, obviously enjoying Yelena’s surprise. Three hundred and seventy-five years since she was born, all but sixteen, or eighteen, of them spent in the relativistic timelessness of interstellar displacements.

 

 

“It must have been hard for you,” Yelena ventured as they rode a transit car, hissing along the habitat’s sub-level tube. The young woman – or girl – sat with eyes downcast, chewing her lip. Co-operative and polite, this Ms Sauveterre, but volunteering little.

“Hard for me?”

“Jumping from system to system so often all your life.”

Amarante shrugged. “It’s all I’ve known.”

The lights of an interchange flashed past the windows. Still some minutes until they reached the lab. “Any childhood playmates? Or friends your own age?”

That brought a smile. “I made friends some places. Then we left, and when we came back they were ten, twenty, thirty years older. Some remembered me, some didn’t.” The smile dropped. “Some had died.”

Physically she could pass for either sixteen or eighteen. Her reticence might be a sign of the immaturity of a sixteen year old, or of the isolation of her upbringing. Her calm and resolute demeanour suggested relative maturity, or else a mask born of isolation. Xenia, her son’s current girlfriend, at nineteen was more child-like than this.

“Do you want to stay here in Nytthus?”

“Maybe.  I’ve seen so many places. Some mean, oppressive. It feels all right here.”

Nytthus habitat, thirty kilometres end to end, six in diameter, with its million and a half citizens, was Yelena’s home. A place she’d always loved, and this girl thought it was ‘alright’. The observation oddly gave a her small flush of pride.

“You’ve been here before?”

Amarante looked away. “No, never.”

Lights flickered again outside the window catching the girl’s eye. A glance at Yelena then she turned her attention to the nails of her right hand. She was holding something back.

“Amarante, why does your mother choose this life? Most who travel the stars leave one place to make a new life elsewhere.”

“Her work. She trades information.”

“What kind?”

The girl’s dark eyes met Yelena’s. “You should ask her.”

The hiss of the car faded as it slowed to a stop. Beyond the window the sign read Medicinsa Forskningsinstitutet.

 

Tekniker Osvald Clemensen came to the reception area and shook Yelena’s hand warmly. It had been fifteen years since they separated. The rancour had long since faded, and he maintained a good relationship with their son. It was arguments over Felix’s conception that had been the source of their disagreement, and she never really accepted the choice they made.

They spoke in Swedish.  “How’s Felix settling in his new place?”

“I’ll let you know. I’m having dinner with him and Xenia this evening.” She spoke in English to Amarante. “Osvald here will conduct those tests I mentioned.”

In the lab Yelena watched as Osvald took samples, ran tests and scans. The odd word of Swedish and patient gestures were enough for Amarante to follow his instruction. He was a good man, Osvald. It had taken years for Yelena to understand it was her own resentment that had driven him away. Another token of guilt to add to her pile. Hers, not Felix’s. She was ever careful to avoid laying any of the burden on her son.

While she waited she reviewed the timeline Amarante had given her: the systems she and her mother had visited, the time spent at each, time in transit. It seemed to make sense, eighteen years lived, all the rest skipped in relativistic displacement. Whether the flight times were correct she didn’t know. But Felix knew something of interstellar navigation from his coursework. She sent him the file, with a note: Does this add up? Looking forward to dinner, see you later, love, Mamma.

Finally Osvald was done. Amarante sat down, still quiet, still patient, next to Yelena.

“Genetic profile is unusually broad.” Osvald continued in Swedish, glancing at Amarante. “Some indication of Mediterranean French ancestry with a melange of mostly West African roots via the Caribbean, but there are traces of South Asian, Japanese, even Maori. Her genome is unmodified, which is consistent with her stated date of birth. Germline mods were rare until later in the twenty-second century.”

Rare because they were illegal. And still were in some places on Earth, but light-years of distance brought laxity in laws and their enforcement. Most citizens of Nytthus and other habitats and settlements of the star 61 Virginis carried inherited genemods. Though yes: over decades and centuries some innocent children had unexpected side-effects. Amarante had no genemods. She was untainted by the guilt of that inheritance.

“What about her biological age?” Yelena asked. From the corner of her eye she saw Amarante’s gaze flick back and forth, seeming to follow the conversation.

“Ninety-five percent certainty she’s seventeen standard, plus or minus three years. I can’t be more precise. The usual markers are inconclusive. Isotopic analysis is useless because every star system she’s visited has different elemental and isotopic compositions. Eating and breathing at each new destination jumbles the record. Her bone and dental growth is also anomalous. If I hadn’t seen the genes I’d have said she had mods for resistance to wasting in zero-gee.”

Yelena barely suppressed a grimace. Those genemods were ones they’d bought for Felix. “What would cause those anomalies?”

“It’s the medication.” Amarante said. “Sometimes we’d be in zero-gee for a while in transit. Never for long but maman was always careful to protect me.” Her Swedish was flawless, pronunciation almost without accent.

 

Two messages arrived while they were on the way back to Yelena’s office. The first from Felix: Wow! That’s some travel itinerary. But times and distances add up exactly when you take into account stellar motion.

The second was from her secretary: A Ségolène Voland is here. She says she won’t leave without her daughter.

“No.” Amarante was adamant. “I don’t want to talk to her. I won’t.”

The afternoon was wearing on with no clear path to a resolution. Yelena would have to arrange temporary accommodation for the girl, and find somewhere for her to wait while she met with the mother.  The indicator on the transit car’s wall gave Henningsberg as the next station. There was an option. Not strictly procedure but there were no rules forbidding it…

 

The woman waiting in Yelena’s office held herself taut, dignified, reserved. Short auburn hair streaked with traces of grey, no cosmetics, clothing simple and practical. Yelena guessed a biological age not too far from her own seventy-two years, though her own was easy to calculate, born and raised and lived her entire life in Nytthus.

“Ms. Voland.” Yelena hesitated. She softened her tone, one mother to another. “Your daughter has applied for asylum here in Nytthus habitat.”

“She can’t.“ Voland snapped. ”She’s just a child.”

“She’s given me a timeline of her travel history with you that shows she has lived eighteen standard years and forty-seven days.”

“She’s lying. Show me, and I’ll tell you where the error lies.”

Mother to mother, her aggressive response was understandable. Yelena fixed a sympathetic smile and kept her tone moderate. “Anything she tells me is in confidence but if you have evidence that contradicts hers, you can give it to me, also in confidence.”

“Has the law changed in Nytthus? It used to be that each side had the right to see all the evidence.”

“This isn’t a trial. I’ll decide whether to grant her asylum on the basis of the facts available to me.”

“Where is she? I want to see her, talk some sense into her.”

“She’s in a safe place. She’s told me she doesn’t want to see you and for the moment I have to respect that.”

Voland’s eyes hunted the corners of the room. She folded her arms. Finally, she fixed her gaze back on Yelena. “I’m not leaving here until I see her.”

Yelena nodded and turned her attention to her desk. She typed a message to the social services department requesting emergency overnight accommodation. Typed another to Felix to tell him she’d be late. All while pointedly ignoring her visitor.

Voland cracked first. “Do you have children, Magistrat Moller?”

“Yes, I have a son. And in your place I’d be as distressed as you are, but it wouldn’t help.”

“What should I do, then?”

“Amarante is very upset with you. I don’t know why and I don’t want to get involved unless I have to. Give her a little time and she may calm down. Even if she is marginally still a minor, if you treat her wishes with respect perhaps you two can negotiate.  In the meantime, can you give me any evidence of her age? Signed and sealed ships’ logs should settle the issue of your travel history.”

Voland tapped her middle finger on the desk a dozen times. “It’s not that simple,” she said. “I’ll give you what I can.”

The desk pinged as Yelena closed the door behind Voland. A response from social services. Re: Amarante Sauveterre. We need clarity on her age to arrange appropriate accommodation.

 

So many years ago Yelena gave up rehearsing the arguments: the things she said, the things Osvald said. The things she should have said. Just the mention of the zero-gee adaptation on Osvald’s lips brought it back. She was twenty-six years old, carefree, single, when the legacy of genetic modification first intruded on her conscience. A documentary about a failed genetic experiment went viral in all the habitats of the system. In the religious colony of Wellspring a group of children were born with a genemod intended to boost their intelligence. Most had needed constant care during brief lives spent devising and solving fiendishly difficult puzzles and playing complex games, unable to communicate in any other way with those around them. The main subject of the report was the sole survivor, Tomas Fuller, then fifty years old and living a somewhat normal life in Nytthus, having arrived as a refugee from Wellspring the previous year. That was forty-six years ago. Forty-six years Yelena had lived wondering how many suffered to perfect the genemods she had inherited.

Years later Yelena met Osvald. He was untroubled by the guilt of that legacy, arguing that for all the genemods inherited or available the price in suffering had already been paid. No-one would suffer more by using them. Reluctantly, Yelena had agreed to give their own child all the genetic advantages they could afford. She should have stood firm, she should have pointed out that by accepting the fruits of that poisonous tree, they watered it, helped it flourish.

By the time she climbed the steps from Henningsberg station the daylight tube three kilometres above was fading to a dull sunset red. The street lights around her flicked on, as they did on the opposite side of the cylinder high above, picking out the constellations of streets through the high-level haze. She turned the corner and climbed the stairs to Felix and Xenia’s apartment.

Felix answered the door. “Hi, Mamma,” his near two metres towering over her as he hugged her.  He whispered, “You really sprang one on us there.”

“Sorry about that. How has she been?”

“She asked me if I was going to report everything she says to you.”

“How did you respond?”

“I said to let me know if there was anything she didn’t want me to tell you.”

“And?”

Felix sighed. “Long story short. She said she loved her mamma, didn’t want to hurt her. But she couldn’t stand that life any more. She said if she got to know me and Xenia she didn’t want to come back here after a year and find us in our eighties.”

“Was there anything she didn’t want you to tell me?”

Felix bit his lip, grimaced.

He was a good lad, a fine young man. “It’s okay. You shouldn’t betray a trust. Is she alright now?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Felix squeezed past the bicycle in the narrow hall and led the way into the compact living/dining room. He glanced towards the kitchen door which stood ajar. “Getting on well with Xenia.”

Xenia’s voice rang out, the words indecipherable, but whatever she said brought a peal of laughter. Greek. She was speaking Greek.

Felix shrugged and smiled.

A foot hooked around the kitchen door pulling it open. Amarante appeared with a tray, calling out something over her shoulder. She stopped dead at the sight of Yelena. “Oh! Are you here to take me somewhere?” She put the tray on the dining table, already set with four places. “Now?”

“Would you prefer to stay for dinner?”

Xenia appeared with another tray. “Of course she would.”

Yelena sat next to Felix, Amarante opposite.

“I haven’t spoken Greek in person since I came to Nytthus,” Xenia said as she ladled out the soup. “My family are all in Kalamata habitat, over an hour away at the moment.”

“Swedish, English, Greek, I assume French?” Yelena asked. Amarante gave her a shy smile. “Any others?”

“German, Yoruba, Hindi, a little Hausa, Ukrainian, Mandarin, but not fluent. And Spanish, both the main dialects.”

“How is her Greek?” Yelena raised an eyebrow at Xenia.

“Oh, very good. The accent is a little odd, and some of the phrasing is very old-fashioned.”

“Well, it’s been over two hundred years since I last spoke it.” The shy smile widened into a grin as everyone laughed.

“I’m in awe,” Xenia said. “How anyone could learn so many.”

Her tan cheeks darkened. “I try to pick up a little everywhere I go.” She lowered her eyes.

She was shy, embarrassed to be so much the centre of attention. Yelena turned to her son. “How are your studies going?”

“Studying?” Amarante chimed in. “Where?”

“Institute of Interstellar Studies.”

“Which Programme?”

“Mostly theory. We’re doing quantum gravity this week. How space and time are emergent properties and how a starship’s Scharvin drive manipulates the underlying state to displace instantly from one place to another.”

“Instantly for the ship,” Amarante said. “Relativity still applies. You can’t get anywhere faster than light would.”

“Yeah.” Felix said. “Scharvin himself proved that. He lectured on it when he was here in Nytthus. Before my time.”

“Except…” Amarante hesitated, shook her head.

“What?” Felix’s eyes lit up with interest. “Except what?”

“The way he explained it to me, it’s theoretically possible to displace to any point in spacetime, but if you violate relativity you end up in a different reality, with no way back.”

A moment of silence, Yelena couldn’t help but smile at the intrigued look on Felix’s face.

“But that…” he began, “…that’s time travel, but if it’s another reality there’s no paradox!”

“You met Scharvin?” Xenia’s bright voice broke in. “The one who invented the interstellar drive?”

“Yes. His wasn’t the first displacement drive but it was a major improvement. I met him the first time when we were both eight years old. Later, he built my mother a new ship with his drive. We just saw him at Denebola with his wife and baby.”

“Is it true what they say? That he’s a bit… crazy?”

“He has bipolar disorder. When he’s working he’s manic, but he has bouts of severe depression.”

“Denebola’s twenty-three light-years away,” Felix said. “The baby will be an adult by now.”

Amarante’s brow furrowed, her lips drooped.

Yelena spoke up. “It’s been a hard day for you. Just say the word if you need to rest.”

“I am tired,” she said. “Where will I be tonight?”

“Social services have told me that as you claim to be eighteen…”

Amarante frowned.

“… they can only offer you a place in the southern district hostel, and in all conscience I would prefer you didn’t stay there.”

“So… where do I go?”

“If you like, with me. I’m sure Felix wouldn’t object to you using his old room.”

“Is that ethical?” he asked. “You’re the magistrat on her case.”

Yelena sighed. “It’s not a trial, I just have to make a determination and I do want her to be in a safe place.”

 

At breakfast Amarante was withdrawn, perking up only when Felix arrived and offered to take her to see the Institute where he studied. Shortly after, a bundle of documents arrived from Ségolène Voland. Yelena retired to her study to examine them.

According to Voland, they’d left Earth when Amarante was five. For the next two centuries, her account of their travels on the ship Eve’s Hope agreed with Amarante’s and with the sealed ship’s logs. For the last sixty-seven years, accounts and the logs of their ship Eve’s Destiny also agreed. For the ninety year period between, Amarante claimed they’d spent eighty-four years in relativistic transit on the Eve’s Desire, six years total at fourteen ports, eight systems.

Her mother’s record gave eighty-six years in transit and four in port, and no logs to corroborate. She strolled into the kitchen to make coffee, mulling over the mother’s travel history. Journeys that spanned the settled stars From Zosma to Nu Phoenicis, tens of stars and their settlements. Weeks or months at the destination before moving on. Most visited twice, some three times, ten to thirty years apart.

She called the customs office. Tulltjänsterman Pedersen’s face appeared over her desk.

“Harald,” she said. “The very man. I’m looking for records of any ship whose name begins Eve’s, feminine name, possessive, docking at Nytthus or any port in the system between twenty-three fifty-two and twenty-four forty-two.”

“Any port? There are a dozen major habitats and twice as many minor ones. Not all of them keep records that long and not all of them will share that data.”

“Do what you can, Harald.”

Questions. Another interview with the mother might answer some. She sent out an appointment for 2pm. She’d just settled down to lunch when Osvald called.

“I’ve been looking again at Amarante’s genetic profile. It’s so odd.”

“You said she had no genemods.”

“No. There are always markers where splices are made. The genes haven’t been modified, but they came from such varied sources they can’t be entirely natural.”

“But if they’re not modified?”

“There’s another way to modify that leaves no traces of chromosome splicing… because you take whole chromosomes, but each one from a different donor.”

“A… multi-clone?” She stretched for the term.

“Right. The zygote, the egg-cell, she grew from was created with chromosomes selected from at least ten, maybe as many as sixteen parents.”

“For what end?”

“Would you say she’s intelligent?”

“Very.”

“Abnormally so?”

“There’s nothing abnormal about her, but she is extremely bright.”

 

Created, by whom, her mother? Though it had no relevance to the issue at hand, the strange and disturbing revelation was on her mind as she faced the woman across her desk.

“Ms Voland. Neither your nor Amarante’s evidence is conclusive. Tell me, if she is only sixteen, why is she so keen to leave you?”

“Rebellious youth. If I left her here she would regret it, as would I.”

“The age of independence varies from place to place. Sooner or later you’ll have to let her go.”

“I know. I hope she’ll stay with me and join me in my work. Another two years, I might yet change her mind.”

Yelena doubted that.  There seemed to be unyielding steel in both mother and daughter.

What happened to the logs of the Eve’s Desire?”

“A containment breach in the drive. The ship was destroyed, all the logs lost.”

“And you say you didn’t come to any of the settlements here at 61 Virginis during the ninety elapsed years you travelled on her.”

“That is correct.”

Yelena tapped a key, and Voland’s voice issued from a speaker: “Has the law changed in Nytthus? It used to be that each side in a trial had the right to see all the evidence.”

“Sounds like you have been here before.”

Voland raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps I did my research before choosing to come.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To trade.”

“Interstellar trade is a difficult business. When you choose a destination all your information is years out of date, and by the time you get there, years more have passed. It must be tricky, working out where to go, what to trade.”

“I do my research.”

“What is it you trade?”

Voland pursed her lips. “How is that your concern?”

 

“I’m sorry, Yelena. Nobody has any record of an Eve’s anything arriving from anywhere.” Harald said. “Of course, New Charlotte lost their records thirty years ago in their power crisis, Magnetite routinely deletes theirs after twenty years, Lonegan’s Bottle doesn’t keep them at all. And Wellspring wouldn’t tell us heathens, even if they knew.”

“Thanks for trying, Harald.”

Yelena broke the call and leaned back in her chair. Two timelines, both plausible, but one of them was a fiction, and no way to tell which. She flicked through the file; the missing persons report stated that Amarante ran from her mother on the half-gee terrace at the north end-cap of the habitat. Aside from some leisure complexes it was mostly filled with retirement homes, hospitals, and hospices, where the elderly and infirm could live less burdened by spin gravity.

Voland traded information, but mostly paid two or more visits to a system, decades apart. They had come here from Denebola, twenty-three light-years distant.

Forty-six years ago, Yelena, like most of the citizens of the habitats at 61 Virginis, had been moved to tears by a documentary centered on the life of Tomas Fuller, sole survivor of the Wellspring experiment. Such a powerful piece must have spread by ship or tight-beam to all the settled systems: Twenty-three years for it reach Denebola where Ségolène Voland was conducting business, twenty-three years for her to travel to Nytthus.

Yelena queried the Register of Citizens: Tomas Fuller, now aged ninety-six, lived in a sheltered accommodation on the half-gee terrace at the north end-cap, where Amarante had gone missing.

 

A man swung the door open. “You took your time, Magistrat Moller,” he snapped. Tomas Fuller, the face from the documentary, but gaunt with thinning white hair and a deeply creased face.

Yelena followed him into an airy lounge with three unadorned white walls, the fourth a single expanse of glass looking down the length of Nytthus habitat. Thin, high clouds masked the sun tube, building to the rain scheduled for the afternoon.

“What do you mean, took my time?”

White walls, pale wood floor, a round table with only a narrow envelope on it stood between four high-backed chairs. The contrast with Tomas’s home in the documentary was striking: back then, he lived in a small room where every surface, including much of the floor, held a clutter of games, screens, ancient paper books.

He sat, gestured to the other chair for her. “You had enough to lead you to me before now.”

“You know why I’m here?” Games and puzzles had been his obsession and that of his cohort, but no sign of that in this room.

“Ségolène and Amarante Voland.”

“Amarante prefers Sauveterre, her father’s name.”

“Which one, I wonder. She has several.”

“You know of Amarante’s genetics? That surprises me.”

His eyes, brown, rheumy, beneath straggly white eyebrows, locked on Yelena’s. “You know how I survived, when all the others like me died?”

“I don’t remember that being covered in the documentary.”

“I made every aspect of my life a game. I set my own goals and my own rules, made the universe the board and everything in it pieces.” His mouth turned in a mirthless smile. “And my every waking moment is spent studying that board and those pieces.” He raised a hand, clenched and unclenched the fist. The window darkened and all three walls lit up in a mosaic of images. People and places, ancient and modern, near and far.

“There is so much information out there,” he said. “in public records, news feeds, historical libraries.” He pointed and an image on the back wall magnified: a young girl perhaps four years old playing on a beach, a young Ségolène Voland looking on. Tomas moved his finger: Nicholas Scharvin in profile, standing at the podium of the old lecture theatre in the Nytthus Institute of Interstellar Studies. Sitting at the end of the front row: Ségolène and Amarante.

The pair featured in many of the images, but there were other subjects. A noted pianist and composer from a settlement at Altair whose music moved billions, but had herself suffered crippling anxiety all her life. A mathematician from an orbital habitat in Sol system who had published several ground-breaking proofs before taking his own life. A dozen others she did not recognise.

A page from the Nytthus legal services office, listing the port office’s duty schedule for the last week. Yelena’s name highlighted.

Tomas pointed again: Amarante as a young teenager sitting cross-legged facing a younger girl across a go board. “This is Wellspring.”

And again: this room, from a viewpoint high in the corner. Ségolène and Amarante seated around the table with Tomas. A narrow envelope rested on the table, as it still did. “And this is when I showed the same image to mother and daughter.”

Tomas’s finger described a circle and the video rolled:

“That’s Katya,” Amarante said. “Where is she now?”

“Ah!” Tomas looked at Ségolène. “You didn’t show her the documentary. Katya died two months later.”

“No! How?”

“Like all the others, she would forget to eat. Died of starvation.”

Stillness for a moment, then Amarante wiped her eyes and turned to her mother. “That’s why I can’t do what you do, maman. The ones that don’t work.  It’s not right!”

Tomas shook his head. “Do you know what your mother does?”

“She studies genemods and takes those that have helped people in one system to other systems and trains people how to use them.”

“You’re such a bright girl, Amarante, you should have worked out the truth by now.”

Ségolène stood. “I can see I’ve wasted my time here. Come, Amarante.”

“What does he mean?” Amarante turned to Tomas. “What do you mean?”

“What do I have in common with all these people?” Tomas waved a hand, taking in the mosaic of images on the walls of the room. “With Nicholas Scharvin, with Katya, with all these other mad geniuses?”

“I…” Amarante switched her gaze from Tomas to her mother, back again. “I don’t know.”

“You should know, you’ve had enough clues to the puzzle. Perhaps you don’t want to see it.”

She hung her head, silent.

“We are all casualties of your mother’s obsession. She doesn’t trade genemods, she creates them, and we are all collateral damage of her project to develop stable genemods for enhanced intelligence.”

“It isn’t like that.” Ségolène stroked Amarante’s shaking shoulders. Amarante pulled away from her and ran.

“That’s why you insisted I bring her!” Ségolène hissed, and ran after her daughter.

The image froze.

“Ségolène left this.” Tomas picked up the narrow envelope from the table. “She thought perhaps I was near enough normal, that she might learn from my full genome, use it for her next attempt.” He drew from it a long stick, a cotton swab, and wiped it around the inside of his mouth. “I didn’t have time to tell Amarante everything.” He slipped the swab back into the envelope. “Give this to your ex-husband, see what he makes of it.”

 

Amarante sat at the kitchen breakfast bar, a steaming mug of ginger tea in her hands.

Yelena sat on the stool opposite her. “I’ve been to see Tomas.”

The girl’s face jerked up, wide-eyed to look at her.

“You and your mother were in Wellspring ninety-seven years ago, and again, twelve years later.”

“Twelve years later, elapsed. Only a month for us.”

“You played go with Katya and caught a shuttle here to Nytthus to attend Scharvin’s lecture.’’

Amarante let out a long sigh, and nodded.

“Twenty-three years ago you were at Denebola.”

“Last week. Maman said she had news, that we had to come back here. I was glad, I liked Katya, I knew she’d be old but I was hoping I’d see her again.” She sniffed, wiped a sleeve over her eyes. “I can’t go back to her. She did that to Katya, to all the others. She’s been lying to me all my life.”

“But you tried to protect her, telling me you’d never been to this system.”

“She’s still my Maman.” Then, in a small voice: “What’s going to happen to her?”

 

Amarante didn’t speak. She sat head down, hands clasped in her lap as the car hissed along the tube.

Yelena fretted. The genetic engineering, the suffering of innocents, were irrelevant to the case. The only fact she could act on was Amarante’s age—which she still couldn’t prove one way or another.

And Tomas! It was his game they played. He’d scheduled the meeting with Ségolène and Amarante on a day she was on port duty. He knew if he provoked Amarante into leaving her mother the case would end on her desk. Before Felix was born Yelena had written articles on the law and ethics of genemods. Awareness of her own hypocrisy had restrained her from writing more since, but it was all still online.

And Tomas still had cards to play. Osvald had analysed Tomas’s genes from the swab and found a complex of brain development genes with clear splice markers, modified extracts from Amarante’s genome. Using multi-cloning, she’d bred her daughter for intelligence and ever since had been trying to go one step further.

The ping of the car door opening startled Yelena, the indicator reading Magistratsdomstol. She jumped to her feet and shooed Amarante out onto the platform.

Ségolène Voland looked up from her seat when Yelena entered reception and stood when Amarante followed.

“Wait here,” Yelena said to Amarante, and beckoned Voland to her office. Yelena took a breath to compose herself and don her official persona: objective, impartial.

“Ségolène Voland, I know that the evidence you submitted to me is false, and that you have twice before visited the 61 Virginis system. Save us time and confirm that your daughter is eighteen years old.”

“She is sixteen, still a child, and she needs her mother.”

Yelena felt herself in the other woman’s shoes. Felix was old enough now to leave home and live his own life, but if someone had tried to take him away when he was younger, she’d have fought to the last of her strength to prevent it. But this was different, so different.

“She was the first of your experiments, before you’d even left Earth.”

“No.  Just selected chromosomes with no genetic modification. No law was broken.”

“After nearly four centuries you must have learned so much, hauling her from star to star while you spliced bits and pieces of her genes, passed versions of her traits on, creating children who had no say in their own fates.” Yelena’s voice rose, sharp and hard in her own ears. “How many suffered? How many died?”

Voland’s face paled. Tight-lipped, she took a breath, and another, and another, before speaking in a voice low and hoarse, spiky with restrained fury. “You judge me? You have the audacity to judge me for the suffering I have caused? How old are you, Magistrat Moller? Over seventy I would hazard, based on the typical genetic profile of this settlement, and you look no older than I do. Will your bones shrink and crumble with osteoporosis? Will your joints seize and grind with arthritis? Will you lose your mind as your brain shrivels? No, you’ll live a fit and active live well past your century, and your final decline will be swift and easy. All these changes I and others like me have worked on for centuries and most people in the settled systems have inherited them. And what of your son? Have you paid a genetic consultant to tailor his genes, to protect him from cancer and wasting in the absence of gravity, perhaps make him stronger, faster?”

“None of that makes it right.”

A cynical smile crossed Voland’s face. “Yet you did it.  The ends don’t justify the means? Well, Magistrat Moller, healthy because of people like me, with a son healthy because of people like me, what are you going to do with me?”

Objective. Impartial. A breath, calm, bring it back. “Before I call Amarante in to deliver my decision, does she know that you have used her genes as raw material for your experiments?”

Ségolène Voland looked hard at her.  “Are you going to tell her?”

“It isn’t my place to do so, but Tomas Fuller knows. You might consider telling her before he does.”

“Tomas Fuller. This is all his doing.”

“He’s your creation. You might also consider what else he might know, what else he might do.” Yelena tapped her desk. “Send Amarante in now, please.”

Ségolène Voland faced the door as it opened. Amarante did not meet her gaze but walked composed and erect to the empty chair, sliding it beyond her mother’s reach. Only after sitting did she spare her a glance.

“Amarante Sauveterre, Ségolène Voland, you have both told me lies in support of your positions. “Ségolène Voland, you have for centuries engaged in activities that are serious crimes in many jurisdictions, including Nytthus.”

“You know I’ve engaged in no such activity while here.”

“No, but in Wellspring.”

“Hah! If the genetic consultants in Wellspring were reckless enough to create zygotes with untested genemods that’s their crime, not mine.”

“The authorities there may take a different view. Their standards of evidence are less rigorous than ours and their system of justice is swift and efficient.”

“No!” Amarante cried, “You can’t send her there.”

“Don’t worry, darling. They won’t allow me to be extradited. They’re good people here in Nytthus. Perhaps too good.”

“Although there is a treaty, Nythus would likely refuse extradition on the grounds that you wouldn’t receive a fair trial. But it can be a lengthy process, months or years, during which you would not be permitted to leave Nytthus.”

“So you’ll tell Wellspring I’m here, and I’ll be trapped in years of proceedings?”

“I’m making no threats, but I’m not the only one who knows you’re here.”

“Tomas!”

“Magistrat Moller!” Amarante sat hunched on the edge of her seat. “What is your decision?”

Yelena leaned back. “How can I decide? I have no evidence, only statements proven to be false. So I’m issuing an order banning departure of your ship until you reach a resolution between yourselves.”

 

Felix stood by Yelena’s side while mother and daughter walked to the departure booth.

“How could you let her go?” Felix muttered. “She’s a monster.”

A monster, and Yelena shared her guilt, for the genemods she’d inherited, for the choices she’d made for Felix. “I can only do what the law allows. But I have published a report on her activities. No matter how far she goes that information will be there before her.”

At the booth mother and daughter embraced. Awkwardly at first, then tightly, intensely. Like they’d never see each other again.

“I didn’t think she would leave without Amarante.” Felix said.

“I told her if they took too long to resolve it, Tomas might alert Wellspring to her presence and she might have to stay years.”

“And after two years she couldn’t deny Amarante was eighteen.” Felix smiled.

Amarante was the first to break away. She turned to walk back to where Yelena and Felix waited. Ségolène Voland watched her go, but Amarante didn’t look back.

Voland presented her palm to the scanner, swept past the barrier and was gone. Amarante’s stride picked up, like a weight had lifted from her shoulders, and joined them.

Yelena too felt lighter. Amarante would just need time and space to find her feet.

“Amarante, you can stay with me until you figure out what you’re going to do.”

She held out her hand to take Yelena’s. “You’ve been so kind, Ms Moller, I can’t thank you enough, but I’ve been in touch with Tomas. He’s found me an apartment near his place.”

Yelena’s heart skipped a beat. “Be careful. He’s manipulative. He knows more than he’s telling.”

“That’s the game he was playing. It’s over now, he told me everything. My genes, his.”

“So… what now?”

“I can’t change the past, I can’t forget it.  But maybe we can help prevent some things from happening again.  I told him if he’d help me do that, even if to him it was just a puzzle, a game, we could play it together.”