Second Interim, page 2
Looking shocked by the flurry of accusations, Ren raised her voice to speak over Coura. “I only want what’s best for you. And I think that—”
But Coura responded in kind, yelling back before Ren finished, “Liar! You want what’s best for you!”
“I know how this ends, Coura! You leave this planet, and I never see you again. I never even find out what happens to you.”
“You’ve only ever cared about yourself! Dad told me how we ended up here! Kearn wanted us to stay with him on the ship. My real father wanted us with him, but you took me from him and stayed here!”
“You know nothing, Coura! He abandoned us!”
“Good for him! I would have, too! Just like he did once before I was born—yes, Simon told me about that, too. He told me more than you know!”
Bursting into tears, Ren lurched toward Coura for an embrace. Coura dodged it, stood up and whirled to look down on her.
“You’re right. I do want to leave this world!” Coura gestured at the ceiling. “I belong out there, not wasting my life here on fruit! I hate you for that! I always have!”
After such a declaration, Coura knew there was no more to say. She stormed out of the room, raced down the stairs and flew out the door into the orchard without looking back. She kept running, weaving between trunks and under branches until the house was barely visible. Without slowing, she chose a tree and pulled herself up into it, climbing until she became invisible in the leaves. There she sat on a bough and spent a minute hyperventilating before twisting to punch the smooth bark until her knuckles were scraped.
She wanted to punch herself, not the tree. She wanted to vomit. She had known this encounter wouldn’t go well, but how had she let it go as badly as this? It would be easy to blame that on her mother, but she knew the truth. However unsatisfied she was with the life Serenity had chosen for them, Coura didn’t hate her mother. She never had or would. She had said it only to inflict pain. Regret, not rage, was what currently twisted her gut in knots.
“Coura!” her mother called from the house. Coura didn’t answer, nor did she the next five or six times, as Ren searched in the wrong direction and her voice grew more distant.
Coura wanted to go to her—knew she should—but pride refused to permit it. After a few minutes, Ren gave up and returned to the house in acceptance that her daughter wouldn’t be found until she was ready. Coura stayed in the tree, crying off and on while the daylight faded around her.
In the dark, in a weakened state, Coura slipped from her refuge and retraced her erratic outbound path, much more slowly, to the house. She entered quietly and mounted the stairs. At the top, she peeked in the slightly open doorway of her mother’s room and glimpsed a still, shrouded lump on the bed.
Coura pushed the door further in and approached the bed, but the lump didn’t react. She raised a corner of the blanket, slithered inside and pushed up against her mother’s back until her face was buried in black hair and two bodies became one double-sized lump under the covers.
“I didn’t mean it,” Coura whispered. “I love you, mom. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, Coura’s heart froze at the prospect of rejection. It thawed when Ren’s hand moved, clasped Coura’s and squeezed.
“Please help me,” Coura begged through yet more tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
Ren rolled over inside their shared cocoon and hugged Coura tightly, kissing her hairline. After a long silence, she spoke words that Coura knew required as much courage of Serenity as Coura had tried to muster on the ride home from the market.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “I’ll never regret raising you here. But you’re right. You have to go.”
Chapter Two
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Interim Directorate of Research & Assessment
Ref. No. MR-25110-259
Type: Planet, Class 3
System: CN772-2298
Local designation: Houdos
Interim registered designation: Houdos
Dominant language: Dyaans (Interim designation: Houdari)
Tech Quotient: 6.4
Commonwealth Induction Quotient: 4.8
Revision date: I.0280
<
Houdos is a pastoral world of low population density whose technological advancement appears to have come largely as the result of contact with independent spacers. Its ethnic makeup is monolithic, with up to 90% possessing DNA from Group G/F/2-a. Its past is largely peaceful, with no evidence of global population-reducing conflicts existing in recorded and/or oral histories. Compared to other worlds of similar technological quotient, relatively little strife has resulted from off-world contact. This may be due to a combination of factors, including the timing and nature of initial visitations and largely harmonious relations between indigenous populations.
In spite of long-term trends toward urbanization, the bulk of Houdans remain engaged in agriculture and related fields. Houdos’s largest city, Spane, is the hub of its contact with other worlds. Interim personnel, including representatives of the Directorate of Instruction & Guidance, have operated out of Spane in overt and covert capacities since Houdos’s initial appraisal in I.036. Since then, the existence of the Commonwealth has become known to indigenous authorities and the population at large. As intended by I&G, such awareness has exerted a stabilizing influence as leaders give favor to policies and solutions expected to contribute to Houdos’s eventual Commonwealth membership (even if it is significantly further away than they believe).
Notably, I&G operatives were the driving force behind the creation, perpetual endowment, and maintenance of the Horizon Academy in Spane, an institute offering higher education in the sciences. Admission is strictly merit-based, tuition-free, and without regard to the applicant’s nationality or residence. Active measures are taken to ensure that the Academy’s educational philosophy remains in line with Commonwealth standards, grooming future local and global leaders amenable to I&G’s desired goals, along with a robust pool of technocrats. The Academy has been enormously successful in these aims, having produced at least 74% of leaders and officials of Houdos’s major polities since its founding.
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While it is unlikely that Research and Assessment can consider Houdos for any level of Commonwealth partnership for at least ten generations, its long-term outlook is favorable.
[Detailed entry follows.]
* * *
The next morning, Coura sent back her acceptance to the Academy.
The three months that followed dragged by at a crawl. The fruit stand became both more and less bearable than before. On one hand, it suddenly felt more like a prison than ever. On the other, at least now she knew the date of her release. Similarly both bearable and not was the fact that her mother now worked at the market with her most days. With separation imminent, Serenity wanted to maximize time spent with her daughter while she could.
Coura didn’t begrudge her that—or much else. After the brief nadir of that night, their relationship healed until they got along as well as before, if not better. Ren seemed happy. Until she didn’t. At work, Coura caught despairing looks from her, moments when the veil lifted, the mask fell, and the woman soon-to-be bereft of her life’s sole comfort stood revealed.
Mostly Coura pretended not to notice before just ‘happening’ to walk over and give her mother a hug. Ren’s darkest hours came at night. Coura surmised this from waking up at times to find her mother had crawled into bed with her.
Apart from Ren’s occasional musings, not really intended as threats, to move to Spane along with Coura, they never talked about the Day.
But the Day didn’t care who dreaded it or welcomed it, or careened wildly between the two as Coura did. The time came when plans had to be made, and that was when Ren started crying and stopped being helpful. Fortunately, instead of having to rely on herself, Coura had another to whom she could turn. With Ren’s blessing, Coura reached out to the man who was no less a father to her—arguably it made him more—for not having turned out to share DNA.
Simon Ascher lived in a town almost two hours’ drive from Martijn Orchard. Coura had kept in touch and seen him regularly over the years, including since her Academy acceptance, although he had little or no contact with Serenity and never visited the house. Accepting at least tacitly that Simon could help where she faltered, Ren didn’t object to letting him handle some of the logistics of Coura’s move.
When only a few sunsets remained before the Day, Coura gripped her mother’s hand across the small kitchen table where they shared dinner and raised a potentially delicate topic.
“Dad told me there’s someone in Spane,” Coura began.
The immediate darkening of Ren’s expression said she already knew more than had been said.
“She could be a good contact for me there, someone close in case I need an—”
“No!” Ren’s hand recoiled across the table.
“Dad says he’ll only introduce me if you agree to it.”
“If you need someone near then I’ll move with you. There’s zero reason you’d need to call Valerie Coleridge.”
“Come on, Mom. Dad says she’s a little... off, but is she crazy or something? What could she do?”
“Simon said that?” Ren asked. “Is he in touch with her?”
“I think so.”
Guessing, or maybe just hoping, that there was a trace of jealousy behind her mother’s question, Coura scrambled to elaborate.
“Not in-touch, in-touch, but more like, hey-how’ve-you-been in touch. I don’t think he’s touching anyone.”
Now she scrambled to recover from misspeaking.
“Not that you’d care. And not that I’d know about that. At all. Or want to.” Coura hung her head. “Ugh, I’m gross.”
Looking up, she started over.
“Anyway, Mom, what’s the harm? Is she dangerous? Or are there are more secrets you’re afraid she might give away?” Even as she said it, Coura knew it was a low blow.
“Probably nothing Simon hasn’t told you already,” Ren muttered. “Fine! Obviously it doesn’t matter what I think anyway. Do what you want. Everything else is out of my control. That might as well be, too.”
Coura grabbed her mother’s hand again before she could storm off. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course it matters what you think. Sleep on it, and decide tomorrow. But I’d really appreciate it if you’d at least let me tell her I’m there.”
The next morning, Ren agreed, if resignedly. That day was Coura’s last at the fruit stand. Her mother let her go it alone for the shift, during which friends, acquaintances and customers brought a cake and gifts and said their goodbyes.
The only farewell that was tearful for Coura was Banhli’s.
“Soon as I can afford it, I’m moving to Spane,” Banhli promised with at least some degree of seriousness. “I’ll find my own place. You’ll live with me, and we’ll destroy that town, Cor-cor.”
“I can’t wait,” Coura sobbed into her shoulder.
With that, Coura locked up the fruit stand for the last time, packed her gifts into the baggage compartments of Banhli’s scooter and took her last ride home with her friend. At the orchard gates, they unloaded gifts and squeezed each other as tightly as if it was for the last time, which it wasn’t. It was still an ending, though. And a beginning.
That evening, Simon arrived. While her mother chose to wait inside, Coura ran up to his truck as it crunched to a stop on the rocky dirt drive in front of the house. Before her father could even disembark, she put her head in the open passenger-side window. The seat under her head was a sea of flowers, a bundle of yellow, purple and orange blooms wrapped in green paper.
Coura reached in and touched them. “For me?”
After a day of receiving going-away presents, including three other bouquets, it seemed a natural assumption. Only when Simon hesitated did she begin to regret having made it.
“Not exactly,” he told her.
“Oh! Alright.” Coura drew the obvious conclusion and smiled. “Good.”
Simon came out, hugged her, then stood with one arm around her, looking at the house. “Nice to see the place again. Hasn’t changed. I’m allowed in, right? Or do I sleep in the truck?”
“Get the flowers, and let’s find out.”
Grabbing the bouquet from the passenger seat, Simon followed Coura to the door.
Even with Coura doing her best not to make things awkward, they were. Ren offered no more of a greeting than she would if a neighbor had come over... if they’d had neighbors. She received Simon’s gift like a fertilizer delivery, asking him to put it on the table. Mostly, Ren ignored him.
After some stilted but benign exchanges, Coura helped Simon start loading her belongings into his truck. She wasn’t taking much with her to Spane—just clothes and a few mementos—so loading didn’t take long. Presumably for a break in the awkwardness with Ren, Simon asked Coura to accompany him on a walk through the orchards. They talked about the Academy and a few other topics that didn’t include Serenity or Mayweather Kearn.
They did talk about Valerie Coleridge, whom they were to meet tomorrow after the drive to Spane. Even Simon didn’t know all that much about her, just that she’d been a Social Engineer, better described as an assassin, for the Interim before the end of translight. Like Simon and Serenity, Coleridge had chosen to leave Lady of Chaos to settle on Houdos.
She hadn’t assassinated anyone since, at least as far as Simon knew.
“You trust her?” Coura asked.
“Enough for her to be your emergency contact, definitely,” Simon said. “Meet her and decide for yourself. You’re an adult now, aren’t you?”
“We’ll find out.”
As dusk fell, their circuit of the orchards brought them back to the house. Inside, they found Serenity preparing frozen dumplings for their dinner. She was a good cook, but Coura supposed she didn’t want Simon to get the impression she’d gone to any trouble for him. It was probably for the best that Simon made a rather prompt exit to wait for dinner in the guest bedroom upstairs.
The ensuing silence between Coura and her mother was only mildly awkward. Coura chose to make it more so with words as they stood side-by-side at the kitchen counter.
“Mom, just let me say one thing, and I won’t bring it up again,” she said. “I don’t know about stuff between you two. I know nothing about relationships. But I know that when it comes to crimes, honesty isn’t one of the worst. And Dad was honest with me for a reason you have in common with him: He loves me. That’s all.”
Coura stepped away, hoping that could be the end of it.
“You’re right,” Ren said. “You know nothing. And you’re leaving, so don’t even try. I can take care of myself.”
“Mom, if you’re—” Coura started to fire back before stopping herself.
If you’re trying to make me not miss you, you’re doing a good job, she could have said. But it wasn’t worth saying hurtful things now, on the day before she moved away. Especially things she didn’t even mean.
“Sorry,” she said instead. “Love you.” She ran up to her room and looked around for anything she might have forgotten to pack.
After a short dinner that was short on words, Coura’s parents parted ways again, leaving her to spend time with each of them separately before all retired early to their bedrooms.
Coura hadn’t even fallen asleep yet when her mother crawled into bed with her, where she was a not-unwelcome presence through Coura’s last night at the Orchard—for a long while, at least.
They left early the following morning for the eight-hour drive to Spane. Serenity took the backseat and insisted Coura ride up front beside Simon, who drove. There wasn’t much talk on the road. Mostly they listened to music they could all agree on, pop songs of past decades that reminded Coura of her childhood. They stopped for noodles, which they ate in the truck.
How would these two handle the return trip alone? Coura wondered. Would her mother still sit in the back? Probably best not to know.
By early evening, they reached the city of Spane. Coura had only seen it twice in her life, both times before her parents’ split and one of them when she was so young she didn’t even have memories of it. But having seen it in vids constantly ever since, she wasn’t shocked or awed by the sight of steel and glass towers. Even if she were, she was determined not to show it once she moved here. She wouldn’t stand to let people she met look at her like some Fruit Stand Girl lost in the Big City.
If anything intimidated her about Spane, it wasn’t all the concrete and steel. It was the people. So many of them in so small a space. It came as no surprise, but now she witnessed firsthand, that she could stand on one sidewalk in Spane for five minutes and see more people pass by than she would all day at the market back home.
That was why it gave some comfort to think she’d at least know someone here. And not only that but someone who by definition almost had to be cool. Not many people could say they knew an ex-assassin. Coura foresaw a good chance she’d make it well known that she did.
Since tomorrow would be filled with Academy things—registration, move-in, orientation, and such—they were meeting Valerie Coleridge tonight. Once they found and checked into their accommodations for the night, they drove to the address she’d given Simon. Serenity wasn’t thrilled about going but came along anyway, since, in her words, she didn’t really have a choice.
After getting lost briefly in darkened side streets, they parked the truck in front of a business whose glowing sign declared it to be VC MARTIAL ARTS. They exited the vehicle and walked toward the building just as its tinted glass doors burst open to release a dozen or so children and as many adults. The young ones wore loose-fitting yellow robes tied with dark belts and matching pants underneath, a fighter’s garb that Coura had only seen in films. Coura and her parents stood to one side and let the stampede pass before venturing in.
