Chapter 14
Led’s insistence weighed on her as they exited the coach at the terminal. She set it aside.
The siren enclave was clearly designed to hit the right notes for rich clients seeking sensual delights and mind-opening experiences. Everything here spoke to the senses, from the fluttering pink-winged insects on the overhead arching branches, to the sprays of tiny white blossoms and the perfectly soft grass underfoot.
The natural perfume of flowers and growing vegetation sifted through the air.
Though quiet, this was the quiet from a lack of thronging masses of humanoids coupled with the chirrup of bugs and crack and rustle of leaves. A light patter of rain fell as she and Led followed a floating drone.
She’d bet they monitored the temperature and corrected for deviations.
The coach hummed as it reversed, then accelerated to speed back to the city or some waiting area.
A white drone hovered ahead of them; the active ON light on its surface blinked green amid a delicate geometric pattern. The decorations on the pillars they passed matched the walls and contrasted perfectly with the ceilings and even the paving stones they traversed. The sounds of their boots on the paving seemed comforting. Solid. Safe.
“It’s flawless,” she whispered.
“Yes.” The low tone Led used and his high-intensity glance sent her thoughts scurrying. He had deeper inclinations than the architecture. Was he casting back to what had happened in the coach? Some of his swear words had carried to her.
She knew she was remembering. Being twirled and swirled in a dance was a novel experience. She’d never...ever danced. Had never felt aroused by the touch of a male’s body on hers, into hers, the pressure of muscle on parts of her that plain liked it. His scent... That is excluding those other times. They didn’t count.
She wasn’t even cycling, she was certain of that.
Perplexing. And damn this uniform for being so corruptible by these psionic powers of hers. Might as well write, please fuck me, on it in red capitals. Worried, she glanced down.
Thank the gods, it only showed randomly glitching pixels. If she ever started texting on her clothes she was truly doomed.
The drone led them onward. Grand stairways were climbed, grand double doorways were entered.
This building they’d been brought to was a palace. Sirens must live opulently and want for nothing. More hallways and stairs, then, your mother awaits, the drone announced in a soft feminine voice.
Cautious, excited, she walked in.
“Felicitations, my dear.” The woman in the blood-red gown that flowed forever down her body turned to Thorn. “I have been waiting. We do not have long. You cannot stay for that would mean your death.”
Her eyes were pools of love and remorselessness. Adore her and weep. Her words were an assault.
Thorn swayed, though she moved not a jot from where she stood at the doorway.
The flying bugs fluttered past in a swarm of pink and blue blotches. She barely looked. They were a designed feature, as was this room that blended tall bookcases and vases of exuberant flowers with an inventively crumbled wall that flowed into a greenhouse. A few insects landed on the woman’s hand, their wings still moving slowly.
The shock died. “Greetings...Mother.”
She dare not ask for an embrace, though Led placed a hand at her back and urged her to take a few steps.
“Fiana.” She smiled. “My name was attached to our messages. “Your companion is Ledderik, previously a cyborg?”
“Yes.” She might have explained his role better but if time was short, why bother? By her side, Led bowed slightly at the waist.
“You expected more from me, I can see this, my Thorn.” Her dark hair seemed alive – the black strands curling and uncurling as if with the tides of an unseen sea. “As my child I suppose one might see this as a right, but sirens are particular about genetics. We have to be. Your father chose an unusual yet apt name for you.”
She paused to draw breath, her brows scrunching together.
Thorn braced herself. She could feel the tension.
“You were a thorn at your birth.”
Great. Her mother was a bitch. Any minute she might just throw up.
“I never knew until then how incompatible are siren and s’kar genetics.” At last she turned and glided toward a desk of honeyed timber, sending the bugs into agitated flight. A few landed again on the sea of her hair.
The red of her dress was so rich it looked as though you could stir it or eat it.
The top of the desk unfolded at her touch and an instrument rose to the height of Fiana’s head, then it sprouted a nest of tubes with lens and scopes. At the base, a panel switched on and glowed a mild blue.
Deftly, Fiana touched a few places on the panel.
“Come. I will help you as much as I can. I require a sample of your flesh – blood, tears, sweat, anything really.” She turned back to Thorn and smiled. “You are past your puberty, despite the drug your father requested.”
“He’s dead.” Another lump of misery joined what already weighed down her stomach.
“I know this.”
“I’m sorry? What is this device?” Thorn nodded at the machine. “I came for help, yes, but also...” She faltered, searching for more words. “I’d hoped to find family, sympathy even. I’ve been told I can no longer call myself a s’kar. You’re my mother. Does that not mean anything?”
“It means something.” The softness in Fiana’s voice went deep, awakened hope.
All the way to Thorn’s heart, perhaps. She touched her chest absentmindedly. Her mother did feel for her but couldn’t say it? Was that it? She might be being monitored. It was the way of life that someone watched you. There was probably a vid of her out there of her most intimate moments. There were drones, lenses, and recording devices everywhere.
“You’re restricted in what you say?” she whispered – as if any halfway decent mic couldn’t record that. Still...
Fiana inclined her head. A yes then.
“Come, my child.”
Just that phrase, those two words – my child – hurt her, made her eyes sting.
This should’ve been a happy occasion. Well, okay, she was in some rather dire circumstances. Still. Fuck her life.
“I said time is limited. I know you’ve reached puberty and your siren half is conflicting with your s’kar genes. It’s what I told your father would happen. We sirens always dominate the genetics of the father. Always. Unfortunately, I learned late that the s’kar genes strive for the same result. We never have male children – they are rare, once in a million – and all our offspring are sirens. You are the result when two incompatible species breed.”
A mess, Thorn thought. “What will my future hold? Be truthful.”
“I will never lie to you. Listen to me, please. A blood sample is the quickest way to answer your question. I am a physician to my kind. It’s what I do every day. I need to see the levels of your hormones.”
So, she wasn’t simply some whore who bedded her father then. How horrible that she’d even wondered. It was a relief of sorts. As if that somehow excused her and her father for what they’d done. She heaved in a breath took a step. “What do you need? Arm? Neck? My head severed?”
Fiana grimaced. It was the most emotion she’d shown. “Shush girl. Don’t be ridiculous. Your wrist. Please.”
Up close to her, though Fiana must be trying to remain unaffected, she saw the tremor of her eyelids and mouth. Had she decided it kinder to not let her feel a connection to her own mother?
It was cruel. Crueler than the dull suck as a tiny vial was applied to her wrist and allowed to search out a vein and aspirate a tiny amount of blood. Bright red swam into the vial. The color of blood always bothered her when it was her own.
She looked up and instead met Fiana’s green eyes. Were those unshed tears?
Thorn asked quietly, “Will I ever see you again after this?”
“Will you? Doubtful. I won’t be allowed to arrange it. Unless by some accident we collide...” She cleared her throat then turned and placed the vial against her machine. “This is will only take a few seconds.”
Digits spun into place on the display, and Fiana put her forefinger to the screen. Her abrupt intake of air was loud and alarming.
This was surely not good. Thorn felt nauseous. Did she share some empathic connection with her mother?
“Tell me. You said you’d not lie.”
Led had been keeping back but now he joined them. The fence of teeth stretching hallway up his face made her grimace, again.
“Mother?”
“I will tell you.” Fiana faced her, put her back to the machine. The bugs resting on her hair, as if annoyed, took off as one and flew up to the ceiling.
She’d allowed herself to be distracted by their flight. Though she asked, the fear was inside her, at the back of her mind, muttering that maybe she didn’t want to hear this.
The disquiet on her mother’s face...
Walk away? No.
“Facts are needed, so I can plan what to do.”
“I realize this.” Fiana shut her eyes a moment. “Your levels are building. I’ve never seen them so high in a siren, though I did study what few cases we have recorded of similar...people. You appear normal right now, but you’re not.
“Your body struggles to adjust but it will never be able to balance this. Thorn...”
“Go on.”
“You’ll hit what we term an extinction-level event within a week or two, a month at most by my best approximations. When that happens not only will you die, so will all those near you, if they are male.”
Extinction level. That term skewered her with a new horror.
“It is inevitable but there is one other possible path for you. A way out.”
Led’s hand arrived on her shoulder and he squeezed. For a moment Fiana appeared startled. Had she forgotten he was here?
Running on logic and instinct she asked the obvious, “What is this way out?”
“It’s not simple or cheap, or guaranteed. You need to seek out the best genetic surgeon in the galaxy and have one half of your genes ablated and reconstructed. You will have to choose which of us is to be you. S’kar or siren.”
“Which is me? I’d choose s’kar.” Her answer had been automatic because she was panicking. She’d die if she didn’t get this done. “Is this beyond what I can pay?”
Of course she was better funded since Jocelyn’s bit of digital juggling, but still not immensely rich. Not when she’d been paying for Led’s loaner body.
Regrets for that? No. It was done.
Her question was dumb. Fiana didn’t know the state of her finances.
Her mother’s mouth was open but she snapped it closed then said, firmly, and the words grated out at times, “I will pay for this, Thorn. I will pay. Damn my species for their impossible laws. You’re my daughter.”
“Oh.” She blinked, wanting to whimper hugs like she had with Jocelyn but unwilling to risk the rejection. “Thank you.”
She lowered her gaze. Hope existed then. Everywhere she turned she found charity. It was humbling and horrible, both.
“I have a drug you can take with you. This may help but there are only two doses. It’s derived from a plant now extinct, and we have been saving this in case a male siren is born. It’s an emergency drug to help a teenage siren establish control if the wildfire of puberty hits them early, before they have any sense in their heads.”
She smiled at the notion of teenagers not having sense. Thorn was having problems thinking too. She might die...and finding a genetic surgeon, no, the best one, in only two weeks? And reaching him or her in time? What were the odds of success? Of dying?
“Are you listening, girl? Two doses and I am not supposed to give you these.”
“How...how do I find this geneticist?”
“I really don’t know but Doctor S on COG 101, the mech planet, is your best resource. They say he knows everything worth knowing.” Her mouth stretched into a reluctant smile. “May the gods go with you, darling.”
Darling. All these suddenly cozy and friendly terms, and she was numb. “Thank you,” Thorn mumbled.
“I need to speak to your Ledderik. I think it best if you wait outside, but...here. I need to embrace you.”
Fiana opened her arms and wrapped them about Thorn. Her mother’s perfume enveloped her too – quiet and feminine. Her arms were soft and somehow everything she needed. Thorn choked back a small sob by biting her lip and hugged her mother.
“Oh my poor daughter. Whatever you do I will understand. I hope you will one day forgive me and Nomad. Sirens can be young and silly and thoughtless too, like most species, and I was that day.”
In that moment, Thorn breathed, only breathed, wishing she did not have to go, to step away and lose this last piece of family.
She opened her arms and removed herself from her mother’s hold.
Words, what words would say what she needed to say? Instead she only blinked and steeled herself. “Goodbye, Mother. Thank you for this.”
“Outside, if you look in the room to the left, you will find a bedroom with many garments. We sirens know what materials will resist our powers. Please, take what you wish. Your present clothes are beginning to look somewhat dilapidated.” She nodded in Thorn’s direction. “There are many holes.”
“Oh. There are?”
There were. Damnation.
She couldn’t quite forgive her mother, she realized, as the door shut behind her with a click.
The murmur of Led’s and her mother’s voices were a fresh duplicity. What could it be she was telling Ledderik that couldn’t be said before her?
In a trunk of carved wood, she found clothes. Practical as ever, she chose things that might be less easily degraded, or might be easily removed if she was in a hurry. Sex, Thorn wrinkled her mouth and nose. Not in her plans but again...practicality won.
First was a mid-calf-length, swishy dress, with the tassels on the hem the one nod toward fanciness. So feminine. If she wore this, would she be casting aside her starship captain hopes? Perhaps? Metaphorically.
Keep it, reserve it for when she absolutely had to wear it.
She donned a black bandeau top then a paler short top that slipped over it and clipped at the front with one button. Midriff-baring but if they grew holes, one would cover for the other. Her new pants were faded mauve, close to flesh colored, and skin-hugging enough to be useful in a fight, because who knew what she’d face on the way to this genetic surgeon? Last of all she pulled on her old boots and trusty red coat.
Thorn ran her hand down the coat.
She hadn’t bothered reloading it with a pattern for days. Feathers, birds, whatever. It seemed so useless an activity considering her plight.