Awakening (24 page)

“From who?” Devak asked. “Pitamah? He told me he tried to talk you out of becoming active in the Kinship.”

Mishalla shook her head. “Another high-status. Hala.”

“Zul’s friend?” Kayla asked.

Mishalla smiled and nodded. “After a meeting, he walked with me to the square and we talked. He saw how I couldn’t keep my eyes off the lowborn children playing on the green. I ended up telling him how much I wished for one of my own. He said he might be able to help me.”

“Does Hala know of children who need fostering?” Devak asked.

“No, not that. Even better.” Joy lit Mishalla’s face. “There might be a way he can fix me. Fix all GEN girls, really. So we can have babies of our own.”

K
ayla let the thought into her mind before she could stop it.
That would mean I could create a child with Devak someday.

It was stupid to even think. She wasn’t sure she even wanted a baby, ever. Not considering how GENs were treated by trueborns. And certainly not now when she was so young.

Even if she took the step of being restored like Mishalla and became a lowborn and there
was
a way to have her body fixed so she could bear a child, there was the little problem of Devak being a high-status trueborn. A trueborn who wanted nothing to do with her.

Maybe with time, she might find someone else, but . . . that train of thought was too much right now. Better to focus on Mishalla’s mission.

“Did you know about this?” she asked Devak.

“No,” he said. “Pitamah never said anything. Although something else makes sense now.”

“What’s that?” Kayla asked.

“Pitamah saw Hala at GAMA headquarters a couple
weeks ago, just as we were leaving. If Hala has figured out a way to give GENs the ability to reproduce, he must be working on it at Akhilesh’s lab.”

“Zul
doesn’t
know,” Mishalla said. “Hala said it’s only in the very experimental stages and it may not even pan out. Even if it does happen it will take a few years, time for me and Eoghan to be ready for a child of our own.”

“You’re willing to take the chance?” Kayla asked. “Hala would probably have to put you back in the tank, Mishalla. He could do things to you, make changes you can’t control.”

“I know that,” she said. “But it’s worth the risk to me. To be able to bring a child into the world with my own body, a child that’s mine and Eoghan’s. I love the fosters, but they’re so easily taken away from me.”

“But why make you work for the Kinship in exchange?” Kayla asked. “Why not just fix you when the treatment is ready?”

“Because completing the mission is the first step,” Mishalla said. “A GEN girl who volunteered to try the uterine restoration had a bad side effect and panicked partway through the experiment. Before they realized what was happening to her, she escaped from the lab. Even worse, she may have caught Scratch after she ran away.”

Kayla zeroed in on that word
volunteered
. Why would a volunteer run away? Kayla didn’t believe that for an instant. “How long ago was that? With Scratch, she’d have to be dead or dying by now.”

“Hala said the Brigade has seen her recently and she looked well,” Mishalla said. “So it’s possible she never had Scratch at all.”

Kayla’s suspicion sharpened even more. “What’s so important about this one girl?”

Now Mishalla’s eyes lit with excitement. “They were growing a womb inside her. It had failed in the other GEN volunteers, but in her it was working, Kayla. The girl is few years older than us, but they were getting close to being able to reprogram her body enough to make her fertile.”

“So, you’re looking for the girl,” Kayla said. “Why here?”

“Because that’s her.” Mishalla pointed again to the hanging of the dark-skinned GEN that the allabain were worshipping. “Her name is Raashida. And Hala says she’s our best hope to have our own babies someday.”

“That’s why you’re here in Esa?” Kayla asked.

“Hala heard she’d been here.”

“I assumed Pitamah sent you to Esa,” Devak said.

Mishalla shook her head. “Eoghan called Zul, asking for transport, because he didn’t want me taking the pub-trans here. Don’t tell Zul. Hala would rather keep this from the other Kinship until we have Raashida back safe. They’ve been so hard-pressed with the bombings and other issues that he didn’t want to bother them with it until we knew for sure.”

The chanted prayers had stopped. The clatter of the plasscine sides of the bhaile tents flapping in the breeze broke the silence. Then lively voices rang from the open space in ordinary conversation.

“I’ll go see what I can find out.” Mishalla started to step away.

“Wait.” Kayla put a gentle hand on Mishalla’s wrist. “You’re willing to give this GEN girl back to a trueborn gene-splicer so you can maybe have a baby some day.”

Guilt flitted across Mishalla’s face. “I think it’s for the greater good. I truly do. And this is Hala we’re talking about, not just any gene-splicer. I need to at least talk to her.”

Kayla could see from the determined look on Mishalla’s face that there was no talking her out of it. She let go of her friend’s wrist and Mishalla slipped from between the bhaile, heading back toward the gathering area. Leaving Kayla alone with Devak.

His dark gaze pierced her, and she couldn’t help the wrench in her heart. His cruel words should have killed what she felt for him. They hadn’t.

“I thought you’d be in Daki,” he said, “not Esa.”

“Risa was too tired to drive any farther. Would you have come if you’d known I was here?”

She could see the answer in his eyes. He had hoped to avoid seeing her. She tipped her chin up, refusing to let herself feel hurt. “I have to go. Risa asked me to find Kiyomi’s sister, Aki.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” he said before she could walk away. “Two more explosions in GEN sectors—one last night up in Cati, one this morning down in Giaqi.”

“I just spoke to Zul. He never mentioned it.”

“That’s what they were discussing when you called him,” Devak said. “After you signed off, he realized you should know. He had Junjie call me, and asked me to relay the information when I spoke to you next.”

“Did Junjie tell you I think it’s Ved who’s setting off those bombs?”

“It can’t be,” Devak said. “Why would he?”

“Because he hates GENs and wants us to suffer. Were those kel-grain warehouses the bombs destroyed?”

He looked reluctant to answer, but he nodded.

“Is there enough GEN feed anywhere to replace it?”

“Just what’s growing,” he said. “But the winter cycle crop won’t be ready to harvest for two more months.”

“So what do you suppose Social Benevolence will use to feed the GENs in Cati and Giaqi and Qaf and Beqal?” Kayla asked. “They won’t offer up trueborn supplies to make up for the loss. They’ll take from other kel-grain warehouses. So everyone is a little more hungry. And where a warren has been taken down, GENs will be that much more crowded together. Don’t tell me you think your father isn’t evil enough to do this.”

He looked away, grief and guilt in equal mix in his face. “He is. But he doesn’t do anything that doesn’t profit him. Where are the dhans in destroying GEN warehouses?”

“The people helping him might profit and work harder to get him pardoned,” Kayla said. “They own kel-grain farms on their adhikar. The shortage will drive up prices. They have interest in the plass mines. Social Benevolence will need plenty of plasscrete to rebuild the warehouses and warrens. Some of those dhans will filter back to your father one way or another, either in favors or wealth. Not to mention that if Ved gets pardoned and gets his adhikar back, he’ll profit the same way.”

“If it’s him.”

She couldn’t bear that sorrow in his face. He didn’t want to believe her, probably couldn’t handle one more drom-load of shame delivered by his father.

He reached out for her, but not far enough to touch her. “I handled things so badly with you, Kayla.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, keeping her voice flat.

She started off to look for Aki and Mishalla, hoping he
would go his own way. But he walked right alongside her. She ignored him, dodging a line of lowborns who had started up a quick-paced dance. Someone blew on a uille pipe, another dragged a drom-hair bow across the strings of a fiddle, the music’s pace challenging the dancers.

When she finally got free of the ever-growing file of dancers, she spotted Aki. A short and dainty version of Kiyomi, Aki was nevertheless a near look-alike to Risa’s wife. She was rolling up the plasscine mural with two other lowborn women, one of them Mishalla.

Devak caught up with her, the lowborns parting for him and giving him wide berth. “My intent was not to hurt you.”

Yet he had, badly, as surely as his father had hurt the GENs by destroying their warehouses.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she lied. Now she all but shoved through the remaining milling bodies between her and Aki, desperate to get away from Devak.

But he doggedly kept pace with her. “You have to know there was no real hope for anything between us. I was trying to save you pain.”

Kayla stopped abruptly and whirled to face Devak. He couldn’t stop in time and bumped lightly against her before he withdrew. That brief contact had every nerve-ending zinging within Kayla. She half-worried her circuitry would short with the electricity of it.

She pitched her voice low. “You trueborns can’t ever seem to leave off controlling GENs. The enforcers want to reset us, our patrons want to order us around, but trueborns like you and Zul are the worst. You want to make things easier for us, or softer, or less painful. But you never seem to ask what we want.”

“I just want what’s best for you, Kayla.”

“After all we went through together, don’t you think I can figure out on my own what’s best for me?”

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” Devak said. “I’m a high-status trueborn. I’m supposed to make the decisions.”

“For everyone? For GENs, for lowborns?”

“Yes. And for trueborns. It’s what I was taught to do. By my father, by Pitamah. I’m the one who’s supposed to be in charge.”

“And you think that’s right?” she asked. “To decide for everybody?”

He looked desolate. “I’m supposed to.”

“So you decided I’d be better off without your friendship. Without . . .”

She raised her hands, wanting so desperately to rest them on his chest, to feel his warmth, the beat of his heart. But she wouldn’t let herself touch him.

“You’re just a boy, Devak,” she said, trying to put her anguished thoughts into words. “Like any GEN or lowborn boy, like any demi or minor-status. Whatever the rules might be, you don’t have to choose for
anyone
except yourself. And most especially, I don’t want you choosing for me.”

“We can’t be together, Kayla. There are a million reasons why.”

“That’s your choice,” she said. “Only yours. Not mine. I won’t let you take what
I
wanted away from me.”

“We can’t—”

“We won’t. Because you don’t want what I want.”

She caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye. Risa was approaching along the pathway between the rows of bhaile.

“Don’t do me any more favors,” she said to Devak, then she turned her back on him. Dipping below the joined arms of a pair of dancers, she hurried over toward Risa.

“That didn’t take very long,” Kayla said as she caught up to Risa and fell in beside her.

“Just bought necessities. Some produce, synth-protein, kel-grain for ourselves. Tired me out keeping an eye on that boy. Looks ready to bolt every moment.”

“Do you need me to pick anything up from the square?” Kayla asked.

“GEN boy carried all of it to the lorry. Can work hard when you get him focused. Invited him here, but GEN boy wanted to stay back, get the sleeper to himself.”

“You’re not afraid he’s going to run without one of us watching him?” A few days ago, Kayla would have been relieved to have Abran gone. Now she wasn’t as sure.

“Calmed down back at the lorry. Just didn’t like being out. Afraid of being seen, I suppose.”

Kayla couldn’t blame him, despite Zul’s assurances that Baadkar was unlikely to tip the kel-grain kettle by searching for Abran. She brought Risa up to date on what Zul had said, including the revelation about what had been written in her bare brain and that Junjie would be fixing it in Nafi sector.

It seemed nearly everyone was up to dance now as the musicians picked up a lively jig. Kayla and Risa had to skirt the gathering place to avoid the dancers’ flying elbows.

Risa’s sharp eyes widened when she spotted Devak on the far side of the clearing. He stood beside a few oldsters too decrepit to dance, making a show of entering data into the sekai reader in his hands. Risa’s gaze shifted to Kayla in a silent question.

“He’s supposedly taking a census of the village,” Kayla said. “But Mishalla’s the one on Kinship business.”

“Looks like Aki’s got her working already. Woman doesn’t like an idle pair of hands. Like her sister.”

Mishalla and Aki were with a group of women seated under the frame where the mural had hung. Risa headed that way, Kayla following.