Jenna Starborn (28 page)

Betista, who had been laughing at one of my stories, instantly grew more serious. “She has been sick for four or five months now, though it is only in the past few weeks that her condition has grown so bad. At first it seemed to be nothing that could not be handled by the PhysiChamber, though she made frequent visits there. But when she got no better, she called in live doctors, who ordered all sorts of tests. In the beginning they thought there was a problem with her heart, so they replaced that, and then they thought it was her blood, so they did a transfusion—took out all her own blood, put new blood in. The most amazing thing. But that did no good either. It seems to be something that cannot be fixed. She is just dying. I do not think it will be very much longer now.”

“And Jerret? What has he said?”

She grew even more grave. “He has said nothing. We are not even sure he is aware of her illness. We have sent messages by courier and stel-route to all his last several addresses, but he has not replied. The lawyer has posted announcements on all the legal channels, and embedded notices in the mail systems of the StellarNet which should pop up on his screen when he logs on under his own name, but he has not responded. We believe he is still alive, for money from his account continues to be spent—but if he is, he has shown no interest in his mother's fate. I cannot tell you how sad it makes me, that a son should treat his mother so poorly.”

“And a mother who loved him so well,” I added. “But tell me, when was the last time you saw Jerret? How was he then?”

Betista thought a moment. “Three or four years ago, I believe. Oh, he was a fine-looking, dashing young man then! Wearing the most incredible clothes—though I believe they were the height of fashion—all bright colors and swirling patterns and tight-fitting garments that I—well, I hated to look at too closely for how revealing they were. He came to visit one day completely without notice, and turned the house upside down, and borrowed a good deal of money from his mother, and was gone the next day without waiting to attend the dinner party she had thrown together in his honor. I think it broke her heart. I think that was when she began to get sick and could not get better.”

“So Jerret has not turned out well, I take it.”

She shook her head. “Nasty, ill-tempered, greedy, idle. And he has been in more kinds of trouble—! There was the half-cit girl who claimed he'd fathered her child, though no one believed her, of course, and I have no idea whatever happened to her. But then there was a level-three citizen—a good eight years older than Jerret—who claimed the same thing a year later, and she had the money and the tests to prove it. Then there have been the scandals over debts and strange illegal deals and I don't know what all. I don't hear the half of it, and I wouldn't want to repeat it if I did. He's been a terrible disappointment to his mother, is all I can say, and now she'll die and he doesn't even care. It's broken her heart, and I swear some days it will break mine.”

“She loved him too much,” I said softly.

“She loved him
wrong,”
Betista said flatly. “Never taught him right from wrong, good from bad. Never taught him to be a good man.”

“Does one have to be taught that, I wonder?” I mused. “Are we not born knowing good and evil—and knowing to run toward the one and hide from the other?”

“Maybe—some of us, at any rate,” Betista said, watching me closely. “You, for instance. You seemed to have had it all sorted out pretty clearly in your head, and no one was showing you the true path from the false.”

I reached out a hand to lay it affectionately on her forearm. “You,” I said.

She made a small noise, composed half of satisfaction and half of dissent. “You had those things in your heart, for I didn't have the time to show you much,” she said. “Never met anyone with a stronger sense of justice in my life. Whatever happens to you, you won't make foolish mistakes and pretend you didn't know the difference. You'll choose wisely, and you'll choose honestly, and no amount of persuasion will change your mind.”

I liked to think that was so; I had always believed it. But these days I was beginning to wonder. “So if they cannot find Jerret,” I said, reverting to the original topic, “what happens to all of Aunt Rentley's property ? Will it be auctioned off?”

“It's my belief that the minute the notice of her death is posted on the StellarNet, Jerret will be knocking at the door claiming his rights,” Betista said darkly. “I shouldn't know what's in her will, but I do. If Jerret's not found within a year, all her property goes to that baby I told you about. The citizen's girl. She has the next legal claim.”

I did not even ask if there was a bequest for me. Aunt Rentley loved Jerret too much, even Jerret's unclaimed offspring, to put him aside for me or anyone else. Besides, as a half-cit, I could not inherit property. Some small monetary gift she could leave me, if she had a mind to, but I was not expecting this either. With my visit here, we were canceling all spiritual debts between us; nothing more solid would change hands.

“I always hated Jerret, and I never liked my aunt much, but for her sake I wish he would appear here a day or so before she dies,” I commented. “For I think it would ease her journey into that other world to have him at her bedside.”

“She would be overjoyed to see him, but it is you who have made her easy, Jenna,” Betista said. “You have done a great good deed by coming here. You are the one she has wanted to see the most.”

“Yes, but I still don't know why. If she had something to tell me, she has forgotten what it is, or cannot say the words.”

“It is you who must say the words, Jenna, and you know what they are.”

I smiled a little and nodded, for I did indeed know. “I forgive you, Aunt Rentley,” I said. And Betista nodded, and patted my arm as if I were again a child and had learned the most difficult lesson of all.

 

 

T
wo days later, my aunt died. I was sleeping in her room, as I had promised her I would, and I was roused from sleep by one great cry. I leaped to my feet and was instantly at her side, to see her eyes wide, terrified, fixed on some visitor imperceptible to my eye.

“Jenna!” she cried, clutching at my arm with a strength I could not believe she still possessed.

“Yes, Aunt, I am here.”

“Jenna, they want you!”

“No one wants me, Aunt. I am quite safe.”

“They do, they do, they asked me for you, but I would not give you over to them,” she said, moving her head imperiously on her pillow. “Oh, Jenna, I am so sorry! I have treated you so badly! But you were so hard to love—so hard, and dark, and small, and I wanted something soft and beautiful. Why could you not have been soft and beautiful?”

It is no easy thing to be called unlovable even by someone as pitiable as my aunt, and I felt a small part of my sympathy leak away. “I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way,” I said, though I was instantly sorry to have brought up the topic of death. “It does not matter now that you could not love me then. I do not hold it against you anymore. I have made my own life, and I am stronger for it, and I forgive you for any sins you think you may have committed.”

Her grip on my arm grew even fiercer to the point where I almost could not tolerate it. “You forgive me? All of it?”

“Every slur,” I said, smiling. “Every crime.”

“But I-I should have—”

“Yes, but it does not matter now. Go in peace.”

She opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the words eluded her. Again, she tossed her head on the pillow; her eyes pinched shut and she seemed to be concentrating now on interior visions. I waited for her to speak again, but she did not. Her grip on my arm loosened, and she seemed to sigh. A long time later, she sighed again. I realized she had not breathed once between those intervals.

Two more sighs, after long, long intermissions, and she took in no more breath. Her hand was still curved over mine, but its desperate pressure was relieved. Her whole body seemed caught in one moment of apprehension, the shoulders hunched forward to ward off blows, the knees slightly updrawn to protect the abdomen. But there were no more blows to fall, no more damage to be done. The PhysIV began a small, steady keening, so soft I would not have heard it if I had not been so close. The sound was so plaintive that I thought to myself,
The machine is grieving.
I was glad that something in the room, in the house, in the universe, would make the effort.

 

 

I
had planned to leave the very day my aunt died, but the following morning, I discovered there was too much to do in the house for me to reasonably leave it all to Betista. So I agreed to stay two more days, but no longer, and I booked my return passage on an outbound cruiser. Then I joined with the housekeeper and the lawyer in tying up the details that even the tidiest soul leaves undone.

It was on the afternoon of this second day that I thought to check my stel-mail, which I had neglected for the whole of my visit. I never received a great volume of correspondence, it was true, so the fact that I had overlooked it for the better part of a week was not a particular sin. And it might not have occurred to me even now had I not been working on my aunt's computer, trying once more to find Jerret and send him the sad news. But terminals could be used for more than seeking out negligent sons, and I logged onto my own account to see what messages might have accumulated during my period of inattention.

In fact, there was only one post directed at me—but this one held a world's worth of shock and woe. It came from Mrs. Farraday and was dreadful indeed.

“Oh, Jenna, I do wish you were here,” it began without preamble. “Janet Ayerson has run off with Joseph Luxton.”

I looked up from the screen and tried to assimilate the words.
Impossible. No one would be that foolish! Perhaps I had read the words wrong.
My mind still in a state of incomprehension, I struggled through the rest of the missive.