10

Insigna sat there, deeply surprised at herself. She had never told the story to anyone, though she had lived with it almost every day for fourteen years. She had never dreamed of telling it to anyone. She had assumed that she would take it to the grave with her.

Not that it was disgraceful in any way - merely private.

And here she had told it - at length and without reserve - to her adolescent daughter, to someone who, until the moment she had begun talking, she had considered a child - a peculiarly hopeless child.

And that child now looked at her solemnly, out of her dark eyes - unblinking, owlishly adult, somehow - and finally said, 'Then you did drive him away, didn't you?'

'In a way, yes. But I was furious. He wanted to take you. To Earth.' She paused, then said tentatively, 'You understand?'

Marlene asked, 'Did you want me so much?'

Insigna said indignantly, 'Certainly!' And then, under the calm gaze of those eyes, she stopped to think the unthinkable. Had she really wanted Marlene?

But then she calmly said, 'Of course. Why wouldn't I?'

Marlene shook her head and, for a moment, there was that sullen look on her face. 'I think I probably wasn't a charming baby. Perhaps he wanted me. Were you unhappy because he wanted me more than he wanted you? Did you keep me just because he wanted me?'

'What horrible things you're saying. That's not it at all,' said Insigna, not at all sure whether she believed that or not. There was getting to be no comfort in discussing these things with Marlene. More and more, Marlene was developing this dreadful way of cutting under the skin. Insigna had noticed this before and had put it down to the occasional lucky blows of an unhappy child. But it was happening more and more often, and Marlene now seemed to be wielding the scalpel deliberately.

Insigna said, 'Marlene. What made you think I had driven your father away? I had never said so, surely, or given you any reason to think so, have I?'

'I don't really know how I know things, Mother. Sometimes you mention Father to me, or to someone else, and you always sound as though there's something you regret, something you wish you could do over.'

'There is? I never feel that.'

'And little by little, as I get these impressions, they get clearer. It's the way you talk, the way you look-'

Insigna gazed at her daughter intently, then said very suddenly, 'What am I thinking?'

Marlene jumped slightly and then gave a short giggle. She was not a laugher, and that giggle was as far as ever she went - usually. She said, 'That's easy. You're thinking that I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I don't read minds. I just tell from words and sounds and expressions and movements. People just can't keep what they think hidden. And I've watched them so long.'

'Why? I mean, why have you felt it necessary to watch them?'

'Because when I was a kid, everyone lied to me. They told me how sweet I was. Or they told you that when I was listening. They always had a look plastered all over them that said, "I don't really think that at all." And they didn't even know it was there. I couldn't believe at first they didn't know. But then I said to myself, "I guess it's more comfortable for them to make believe they're telling the truth." '

Marlene paused and then abruptly asked her mother, 'Why didn't you tell Father where we were going?'

'I couldn't. It was not my secret.'

'Perhaps if you had, he would have come with us.'

Insigna shook her head vigorously. 'No, he wouldn't. He had made up his mind to return to Earth.'

'But if you had told him, Mother, Commissioner Pitt wouldn't have let him leave, would he? Father would have known too much.'

'Pitt wasn't Commissioner then,' said Insigna with absent irrelevance. Then, with sudden vigor, 'I wouldn't have wanted him on those terms. Would you?'

'I don't know. I can't tell how he would have been if he had stayed.'

'But I can tell.' Insigna felt as though she were burning again. Her mind went back to that last conversation and her last wild shout telling Fisher to go, that he must go. No, it had been no mistake. She wouldn't have wanted him as a prisoner, an enforced member of Rotor. She hadn't loved him that much. For that matter, she hadn't hated him that much either.

And then she changed the subject quickly, allowing no time for her expression to give her away. 'You upset Aurinel this afternoon. Why did you tell him Earth would be destroyed? He came to me about that and was very concerned.'

'All you had to do was to tell him that I was just a kid and no-one listens to what a kid says. He would have believed that right away.'

Insigna ignored that. Maybe it was a good idea to say nothing in order to avoid the truth. 'Do you really think Earth will be destroyed?'

'I do. You talk about Earth sometimes. You say, "Poor Earth." You almost always say, "Poor Earth." '

Insigna felt herself flush. Did she really speak of Earth in those terms? She said, 'Well, why not? It's overcrowded, worn-out, full of hatred and famines and miseries. I'm sorry for the world. Poor Earth.'

'No, Mother. You don't say it that way. When you say it-' Marlene held up her hand in a groping gesture, feeling for something, her fingertips just missing it.

'Well, Marlene?'

'It's clear in my mind, but I don't know how to put it in words.'

'Keep on trying. I must know.'

'The way you say it, I can't help but think you feel guilty - as though it were your fault.'

'Why? What do you think I've done?'

'I heard you say it once when you were in the view room. You looked at Nemesis, and it seemed to me, then, that Nemesis was mixed up in it. So I asked the computer what Nemesis meant and it told me. It's something that relentlessly destroys, something that inflicts retribution.'

'That wasn't the reason for the name,' cried Insigna.

'You named it,' said Marlene quietly, inexorably.

That was no secret, of course, any longer, once they had left the Solar System behind them. Insigna had then taken the credit for the discovery and for the name.

'It's because I named it that I know that that wasn't the reason for the name.'

'Then why do you feel guilty, Mother?'

(Silence - if you don't want to tell the truth.)

Insigna said at last, 'How do you think Earth will be destroyed?'

'I don't know, but I think you know, Mother.'

'We're speaking at cross-purposes, Marlene, and let's let it go for now. What I want, though, is to make sure you understand that you are not to talk about any of this to anyone - not about your father, and not about this nonsense of Earth's destruction.'

'If you don't want me to, of course I won't, but the destruction bit is not nonsense.'

'I say it is. We'll define it as nonsense.'

Marlene nodded. 'I think I'll go view for a while,' she said with seeming indifference. 'Then I'll go to bed.'

'Good!' Insigna watched her daughter leave.

Guilty, thought Insigna. I feel guilty. I wear it on my face like a bright banner. Anyone who looks can see it.

No, not anyone. Just Marlene. She has the gift of doing so.

Marlene had to have something to compensate for all she didn't get. Intelligence wasn't enough. It didn't make up sufficiently, so she had this gift of reading expression, intonation, and otherwise invisible bodily twitches, so that no secret was safe from her.

How long had she kept this dangerous attribute to herself? How long had she known about it? Was it something that grew stronger with age? Why did she allow it to emerge now, to peep out from behind the curtain she seemed to have drawn over it, and to use it as something with which to beat her mother?

Was it because Aurinel had rejected her, finally and definitely, according to what she had seen in him? Was she striking out blindly in consequence?

Guilty, thought Insigna. Why shouldn't I feel guilty? It is all my fault. I should have known from the start, from the instant of discovery - but I didn't want to know.