Offspring (32 page)

“And to Lucia’s safety, come to that,” Tan finished. “I’ll definitely have to put more staff on this one.”

“Doing our bit to improve the economy,” Kendi observed wryly.

“And increase the Silent population,” Ben added with his mouth full. Lucia gave him a playful slap on the top of the head.

They outlined plans and options. Kendi called the Vajhurs, who were happy to accept the surveillance job, and Harenn went to work on a schedule. A few minutes later she put her stylus down.

“I should not bother with this until I have had a chance to speak with Sejal,” she said. “He spied on Foxglove’s campaign, after all, and is more likely to know who we should be watching.”

“We’re not watching Foxglove himself?” Kendi asked.

“The media keep a close eye on him, which restricts his movements,” Harenn said. “Foxglove’s lackeys are the ones who will lead us to anything illicit.”

“Attention! Attention!” said the computer. “Wanda Petrie is calling for Father Kendi Weaver.”

Kendi accepted the call, and Petrie’s face appeared on the kitchen wall. She looked even more tired and frazzled than before.

“
I have a new speaking schedule for you
,” she said.
“Check your messages for the details, but it starts in three days
.”

“Good,” said Lucia. “Three days’ worth of cooking lessons before you disappear again.”

“
The Senator is giving a press conference at four
,” Petrie said, “
if you’re interested in watching
.”

“Is she going to answer to the charges?” Ben asked.

“
Certainly not!
” Petrie said, aghast. “
That would be tantamount to admitting guilt at this stage. In a couple days we will address that problem in public, when we have more information and some of the crisis has calmed down, but not until then. In the meantime
—”

“Don’t talk to any reporters,” Kendi said. “I know.”

“When do you want us to start watching Foxglove’s people?” Gretchen asked after Petrie signed off.

“As soon Harenn finishes that schedule,” Kendi said. “What are you writing, Lucia?”

“A shopping list,” she said. “You and Ben are cooking me breakfast tomorrow morning.”

Kendi stared at the recipe text floating above the new data pad Petrie had given him. Outside, the sun had risen, tree lizards were chirping, and birds were singing. A fire extinguisher sat conspicuously on the cupboard. Ben’s idea, not Lucia’s. Ben himself stood in the corner, looking like a deer ready to flee a forest fire.

“Are you sure about this?” Kendi asked. “I’m warning you—I couldn’t even get a kitchen job as a slave. My mother was a cook, and she tried twice to get me out of mucking ponds, but I was so horrible in the kitchen that the manager put me right back outside again.”

“You can read directions, can’t you?” Lucia said.

“Yes.”

“And you can do as they say, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you can do it. Cooking is nothing more than following a recipe and caring whether or not it comes out. So. The recipe says beat two eggs in a large bowl with a fork.”

Kendi picked up an egg and cracked it so hard against the cupboard that it squelched into a yellow shambles. Lucia didn’t move to help him clean it up. Once he had taken care of the mess, he cracked a second egg more carefully and it dropped neatly into the bowl. He followed with one more. Lucia nodded approval. Kendi scrambled the eggs with a fork.

“How long do I do this?” he asked.

“Read the recipe,” she said.

A ‘Beat until fluffy,’ “ he read, and checked the bowl. “Looks fluffy to me.”

“What comes next, then? Ben, don’t you leave. There is ham in the refrigerator. Check the recipe database to see how you should prepare it for breakfast.”

Kendi, meanwhile, got out the milk and started to pour some into the bowl. Lucia caught him by the wrist before he could begin.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“The recipe calls for milk,” he said.

“How much?”

“I can measure it by eye,” he protested.

Lucia wordlessly handed him a measuring cup and watched while he poured the correct amount and emptied it into the bowl.

“Seems stupid to pour twice,” he grumbled.

“You are not pouring twice. You are measuring once and pouring once.”

She watched while he also measured out flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. While he stirred the mixture with a wire whisk, Lucia turned to Ben, who had put a frying pan on the stove with a bit of butter in the bottom. It was melting into a golden puddle.

“Very good,” she said. “And the right heat. Set the ham on the cutting board and slice it as thick as you want it. Don’t look at the slice—keep your eye on the part that remains, and you’ll be more even.”

“Just for the record,” Ben said, “I’m not a
bad
cook. I just hate cooking.”

“Perhaps because you associate it with being alone in the kitchen doing something boring,” Lucia said. “If you and Kendi cook together, it’ll become a family event and therefore more interesting.”

“Maybe,” Ben said dubiously, “but what about—”

Lucia’s hand shot out and caught Kendi’s wrist again. He was holding a spice container over the bowl of pale pancake batter. “What are you doing
now
?”

“Just adding some cinnamon,” he said plaintively. “My mother always put cinnamon in our pancakes.”

Lucia removed the container from Kendi’s hand and set it firmly aside. “I think this is why you always fail at cooking,” she said. “You make changes in the recipe before you understand what you’re doing. It’s perfectly fine to tinker with a recipe, but
only
after you know how the original works. Never, ever change a recipe until you’ve tried it once or twice as it’s written. Besides”—she held up the spice container—”this is chili powder, not cinnamon.”

Under Lucia’s gimlet eye, Kendi heated the griddle and poured spoonfuls of batter into a light coating of sizzling oil. Ben, meanwhile, dropped thick slices of ham into the frying pan. The kitchen began to smell of salty meat and hot pancakes. While they were cooking, Kendi tried to turn away, but Lucia stopped him.

“Don’t leave the stove.”

“But they’ll be a while,” Kendi said. “I just wanted to check my messages real quick.”

“Another reason why your earlier attempts went wrong,” Lucia said. “Let me guess—you get engrossed in something else and only remember your meal when the smoke alarm goes off.”

“That’s the way of it,” Ben said. “One time he put a loaf of store-bought bread dough in the oven and left it there for seven hours. It was a crust brick all the way through.”

“That was just one time!” Kendi protested.

“And then there was the molasses cookie crisis,” Ben said, “and the donut disaster and the spaghetti—”

“All right, all right.”

“You’re burning,” Lucia pointed out.

The first batch had turned black. Kendi thought the pancakes might still be salvageable, but Lucia ordered him to pitch them and start over.

“A hint of burned taste ruins everything,” she said.

The second batch came out golden-brown and fragrant. Ben finished frying ham while Kendi started a third batch and Lucia set the table. In the end they sat down to a delicious breakfast of crispy pancakes, sweet syrup, and rich ham.

“A fine meal,” Lucia said. “The nice thing about cooking is that the reward is usually immediate and delicious.”

“I hear that,” Kendi said, waving his fork.

“And we have just enough time,” she added, checking her fingernail.

“Time for what?” Ben asked warily.

“To start a batch of bread for lunch.”

Over the next three days, Lucia taught the two men how to make bread, pasta, simple sauces, fried chick-lizard, mickey-spike stew, roasted potatoes, stuffing, cookies, and more. To relieve the surplus of food, they fed Tan, Gretchen, Lars, Harenn, and Bedj-ka. One day Ben invited Mother Mee up for lunch. She accepted with pleasure and gave them a few recipes of her own. Even Gretchen grudgingly admitted that the food was “more or less edible.”

“I’m better at this than I ever thought I could be,” Kendi admitted as they put the last of the dishes away late on the third day. “Thanks to an inspired teacher. How about you, Ben?”

“I don’t loathe it,” he said. “Though I’ll admit to a mild dislike.”

Harenn, meanwhile, set up a twenty-four hour surveillance schedule on Foxglove’s campaign. It wasn’t difficult—the cameras did most of the work, and Gretchen and the Vajhurs could keep an eye on the monitors from their own data pads. Ben worked on finding a way into Foxglove’s personal and financial records. Tan, Lars, and a few others continued rotated guard duty on Kendi, Ben, Harenn, and Lucia.

More time passed, and the winter rains began. Salman’s campaign dragged in a dismal third place, and the dreary weather mirrored everyone’s morale. The trial of Willen Yaraye began, and the prosecutors dragged Salman into it, forcing her to testify. She swore that she knew nothing of his criminal connections, but the media portrayed this as an appalling ignorance rather than an innocent mistake—especially in Othertown, where the few feeds Foxglove didn’t own were trying to curry his favor—and Salman’s poll scores dropped even further.

Despite the depression hovering over Salman’s campaign, Bellerophon itself enjoyed a lift of spirit. The news that children were once again entering the Dream stormed across the planet, bringing hope to thousands. The news spread through the Dream as well, and Kendi could feel the excitement when he walked there. Bedj-ka transferred to school at the monastery, where he took classes in meditation and memory training in a special accelerated series of courses designed to ready him for Dream communication work as soon as he was old enough. He took to the exercises as if he had been born to them, and Harenn bragged of his progress to anyone who would listen.

No adults among the Silenced found their way back into the Dream, whether they were human, Ched-Balaar, or members of other species. Dream experts set forth a great number of theories about this, most of which followed Martina’s reasoning—that children’s brains were more resilient, able to weather the Despair better than their elders. Foxglove, of course, referred to “his” discovery at every opportunity on the campaign trail, and his popularity soared even higher.

Ben, meanwhile, continued poking around with his computer system. Although he wasn’t able to hack into Foxglove’s records, he did discover through other sources that Foxglove was wealthier than anyone imagined because he owned most of the mines surrounding Othertown. The situation tugged at Kendi’s instincts, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. Not that he had much time to ruminate, with the endless rounds of speeches, fund raisers, and rallies. Fewer and fewer people showed up as the months wore on, and it got harder and harder for Kendi to muster up the energy to keep speaking.

There was no word about the missing file, and Kendi was relieved to see Ben able to sleep through the night again, though he still occasionally came out of the Dream with cuts and scratches on his hands. He brushed aside Kendi’s questions about them, saying they were side-effects of “stress relief.”

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            Harenn entered her third trimester and Lucia entered her second. Harenn’s movements were slower and more deliberate as her middle grew larger and heavier. Regular check-ups showed the fetus was developing perfectly, with no complications, and the baby was expected to arrive right on time—a few weeks before the election, as it happened.

“I am not sure which event is more momentous,” she said from the rocking chair Ben had installed in the nursery. “The gubernatorial election or this baby’s birth.”

“Depends on whose household you’re in,” Kendi said. He aimed his data pad at the wall and thumbed it. The walls swirled into a talltree forest setting, complete with smiling, child-sized dinosaurs roaming among happy flowers and grinning bushes. He frowned and thumbed the data pad again. The forest disappeared and an ocean scene washed over the walls in its place. Fish and merfolk danced among waving kelp, pausing to wave at Kendi and Harenn every now and then. Bubbles made smiley faces. Kendi made another frown and aimed the data pad at the wall.

“Just choose one,” Harenn said. “The child will not care.”

“I want it to be perfect,” Kendi objected, gesturing at the offending room. Two cribs awaited occupants. Two dressers were filled to bursting with baby clothes, and the shelves beneath the changing table bulged with baby supplies. More shelves were filled with playthings ranging from simple stuffed toys to interactive holographic animal playmates which adjusted themselves to meet the child’s stage of development. Outside, the sun had set and dark shadows pooled under the talltree branches.

“The main thing is that you love the child and pay lots of attention to it,” Harenn said. “Everything else is secondary. Ah—it’s moving.”