Sharon Shinn - Jenna Starborn

JENNA STARBORN

Sharon Shinn

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contents

|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|

|Epilogue|

For Jean,

with whom I had the conversation about tigers

Chapter 1

You would think that if someone commissioned your conception, paid for your

gestation, and claimed you immediately after your harvesting, she would love

you with her whole heart; but you would be wrong. Aunt Rentley had had me

created to fill a void in her existence, which was unexpectedly filled by others.

I was quickly made not only redundant but unwelcome, and yet there I was, in

her house, under her feet, a constant reminder of how much she had paid to

purchase something she no longer wanted.

This was never clearer than on Jerret’s ninth birthday, an event celebrated

with as much flourish as my aunt could muster. The cooks spent a week baking

special dishes for the delectation of the hundred guests. The housemaids

cleaned every room in the fifty-room mansion down to the curtains, walls, and

floorboards; the gardeners replanted the entire front lawn with a hybrid rose

imported from Karian and doomed to die within a month in our unfavorable

climate. The walls of the mansion were themselves recharged so they hummed

with energy and delighted you with the faintest static shock if you ran your hand

too rapidly over the simulated brick. Cold and sunless it might be outside, but

inside existed an environment of warmth, light, cheer, and goodwill.

For those welcome in the house, of course.

During all this frenzied activity, I kept to myself as much as possible, for

there was nowhere I was particularly wanted. As Aunt Rentley’s ward, I was

not exactly a servant, so there was no work for me to perform in the kitchen or

laundry room; and yet neither Aunt Rentley nor Jerret wanted me to join in their

family councils as they planned their guest list and considered activities for the

celebration. I was used to being ignored by my aunt and her son, but during

these planning stages, I was positively reviled. My briefest appearance caused

her to shriek with impatience and order me from the room, stupid girl, did I not

see how busy she was with important preparations? Jerret, a born bully, would

leap to his feet and point a chubby finger toward the door, bawling at me to get

out get out get out, he did not want me ruining his party with my sallow face and

witch’s eyes.

He stopped at verbal abuse if his mother or one of the servants could hear,

but if I happened to cross his path when no one else was near, he would fall

upon me in physical rage. I was a year older than he was, but he was by far

bigger, and more than once he cornered me against some doorway or banister

and threw punches into my stomach and raised bruises on my shins. This

afternoon, he had wrestled me to the ground and twisted his hand in the collar of

my shirt so that I could scarcely breathe. I truly thought I would lose

consciousness or suffocate, but then I heard footsteps down the hall.

It was Betista, coming around the corner with her arms piled high with fresh

linens. “Master Jerret!” she exclaimed, and suddenly I was free, supine on the

cold floor, too faint to immediately raise my head. Through a strange dullness in

my ears I heard Jerret scramble to his feet and make his sullen defense.

“It was her fault. She hit me,” he growled.

Betista ignored him, dropping to her knees to investigate my condition. I

heard the sounds of Jerret’s footsteps fleeing down the hall.

“Jenna!” Betista exclaimed. “Jenna, dear girl, are you badly hurt? Do I need

to send you to the PhysiChamber?”

I had recovered enough now to push myself to a sitting position. She was still

staring down at me, clasping her hands under her full chin, her gray eyes sick

with worry. I attempted a smile. “I’ll be fine. I feel sick to my stomach, but that

will pass.”

“Let me take you to the kitchen,” she said briskly, hauling her bulk to her feet

and reaching out a hand to help me up. “I’ll make you some tea.”

But the thought of swallowing anything hurt my bruised throat. “No, thank you

very much,” I said formally. Ignoring her outstretched hand, I pushed myself to

my feet. “I’ll just go to my room now.”

Betista looked undecided. She was the housekeeper, a woman of some

influence in the household, and she was the closest to an ally I had ever had.

Yet, as she would never overtly defy my aunt Rentley, and she could not protect

me from Jerret, there was very little she could do to materially improve my lot.

Except not hate me.

“I think you should come sit quietly by me for a while,” she said. “I should

keep an eye on you. You look pale and a little strange.”

“I always look strange,” I said, with an attempt at humor.

Betista bristled. “Now, that’s not true! You’re a lovely girl— a little thin,

maybe, and dark, though some consider a dark complexion to be

fashionable—you shouldn’t listen to what your aunt says, you know she’s

partial to Master Jerret—”

I let it go; I was not about to discuss my physical merits with the housekeeper

here in the hallway when all I wanted to do was go to my room and lie down.

“In any case, I’ll be fine,” I said.

Betista gathered up her linens, which she had dropped helter-skelter on the

floor when she came to my aid. I sensed a certain indecision in her manner.

“Now, what happened this afternoon,” she said slowly, uncertainly. “You’re not

going to tell on Master Jerret—”

“No,” I said tiredly.

“Because she can’t help it, he’s her son and she loves him. When you tell

tales on him, she doesn’t believe you.”

“I know.”

“So it does no good to be reporting stories to your aunt,” she finished up in a

rush.

I had made my way somewhat shakily to the head of the stairwell; it was the

servants’ staircase, but it would take me by an indirect route to my own

chamber. Over my shoulder, I said curtly, “She’s not my aunt,” and I began the

long climb up to my room.

In point of fact, she was not my aunt; she had intended to be my mother. That

was when she was childless, of course, before the doctors had made the

miracle of Jerret possible. So she had commissioned me, and I had been grown

in the generation tanks of Baldus, and she had come every day to watch my fetus

shape itself and uncurl. She had laid her hand on the glass tanks, trying through

the impermeable substance to touch my clenched fingers, and she had counted

the minutes and the days until I was ready for harvesting.

When did it go wrong for her? When did I lose my hold on her heart? Was

there something repulsive in my small, squalling body—was there a timbre in

my midnight wail that sent tremors through her sensitive bones? I like to think

neither of these things are true; I like to think that any child she had brought

home from the gen tanks would have, eventually, seemed to her something

foreign and hateful. She is not a happy woman around synthetics; she cannot

stand the sight of the cyborgs that labor in the mines, indifferent to the planet’s

cold and its poisons alike. I like to think that it was the method of my creation,

and not the soul inside my body, that made her despise me.

Or perhaps it had nothing to do with me or my conception: Perhaps she was

so limited in her love that she had none to spare for me once she could produce

her own son. It had been an accepted thing, since some early childhood trauma,

that she would be unable to conceive; and among her contemporaries, to bear a

child naturally was considered the highest accomplishment a woman could

attain. But something happened only two months after she brought me home. The

doctors perfected the artificial womb, and her fortune was easily large enough

to purchase one, and suddenly she was carrying within her own body that most

precious commodity, another life; and there was no room for me in her thoughts,

in her house, in her heart.

Naturally, this left me in a most precarious position. Since she had paid for

me, she was responsible for me; I was not easily disposed of. And yet, since

she had never formally adopted me, I was not legally her daughter. In fact, I had

no legal status at all. I simply was.

The technical term for my condition was half-citizen, and there were many

like me, on Baldus and throughout the interstellar system. We were created from

many circumstances. Some, like me, were rejected gen-tank babies. Some were

legitimately conceived sons and daughters whose parents had decided, for some

reason or another, not to acknowledge them. Some were orphans, with no

family to care for them and no institution willing to pay for their upkeep and

training in a profession that would allow them to earn enough to buy their own

citizenship.

Citizenship existed at five grades, from the fifth and lowest rung to the first

and highest. Fifth- and fourth-level citizens were accorded such status only on

their home worlds; third-and second-class citizens were accepted in more

regional districts of federated planets; and first-grade citizens were honored

everywhere throughout the Allegiant Planetary Council Worlds.

Citizenship grades had been instituted in the first greedy, brutal days of

interstellar exploration. The fractured governments of the planet Earth being

unable to sustain any cohesive space-going program, the real advances in

technology and colonization had been, at the beginning, financed by

extraordinarily wealthy private entrepreneurs who were not willing to share

their prizes with the masses back home. As one of the great early merchant

princes put it, “Imperialism is incompatible with democracy.” Those first

families in space risked much, gained everything, and passed on to future

generations wealth so fabulous it could hardly be reckoned—and the same

disinclination to share their fortunes. As the Allegiance was formed between

newly settled planets, social systems grew more codified, and the chance of

breaking from a preordained caste grew more and more remote.

There were only three ways to become a citizen of any rank: Be born (or

adopted) to the status, marry into it, or buy it. I had been unlucky on the first

count. Even at the age of ten, I could see that the other options did not look

promising for me, either. I knew I was contemplating a lifetime of

half-citizenship. But it would not be so bleak as all that. Half-cits were allowed

to work, and keep their wages (though they generally were employed in menial

jobs and taxed at exorbitant rates). They could marry. They could not vote and

they could not own extensive property and they were strongly discouraged from

reproducing (though these days you heard fewer stories of half-cit children

being whisked away from their mothers’ arms and disappearing into some

unmentionable hell). But they could be productive members of a vast and

far-flung society, and I had hopes of one day finding my entree into that

universe. I believed I could gain some useful skills, and find worthwhile

employment and support myself in some not wholly distasteful enterprise; and it

was this goal that gave me the strength to go on during my darkest days under

Aunt Rentley’s roof. I was not valued here, but someday, somewhere, in the

smallest of positions, someone would value me, and on that slim hope I fed

even when I could take in no other sustenance.

That night, dinner was torture. My awkward position in the household made

it impossible for me to dine with the servants, so I always took my meals with

Aunt Rentley and Jerret. Usually they ignored me, which was easy to do, as the

table was long and narrow, and we sat as far from one another as we could. I

always ate as quickly and as quietly as possible, though Aunt Rentley invariably

remarked on my slurping or chewing sounds, and I excused myself from the

table as soon as I was able.

This night, though I ate my soup as noiselessly as I could, my gestures or my

appearance or my very presence irritated Aunt Rentley almost at once.

“Sweet Lord Yerni, girl, can’t you manage to swallow your food with a little

less commotion?” Aunt Rentley exclaimed. “I declare, my son and I can hardly

hear each other speak for all the racket you’re making.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I did not feel at all sorry; I felt maligned. “I can

eat with Betista if you’d rather.”

“Eat with Betista! Of course you could not! Eat with the servants, what will

you be saying next…” Her voice trailed off. Down the length of the table I

could feel her eyes examining me. “What in the world have you done to

yourself? You’ve dirt all around your neck.”

I took another spoonful of my soup, this time sucking it up with the noisiest

inhalation I could manage. “It’s not dirt,” I said.

“Stop that! Eat like a lady,” Aunt Rentley said sharply. “If it’s not dirt, then

what is it?”

I knew better—and Betista had warned me—but I could not help myself. I

was angry, and my face hurt, and my muscles still ached with that remembered

brutality. So I said, calmly as you please, “A bruise. Jerret choked me in the

hall.”

“I did not!” Jerret squealed just as Aunt Rentley uttered a sharp exclamation

of disbelief.

“Wicked girl!” she cried. “To lie about your betters in such a way!”

I shrugged. “I’m not lying. He pushed me, and he choked me, and he wanted

me to be hurt.”

“Lying! She’s lying!”

Aunt Rentley was on her feet, pointing a trembling finger at me. “You will go

to your room, miss, and you will meditate on your sins, and you will not be

allowed back at this table—no, nor shall you have any dinner or any breakfast

or any food at all—until you apologize to Jerret.”

I pushed my chair back and stood up. This was not the first time I had been

banished from the table and told I would skip a meal or two, but this time it

looked like starvation to me, for I would not apologize to Jerret if it meant my

very death. “I feel sorry for you,” I remarked. “To be so blind that you love

someone so cruel.”

She actually gasped. “Sorry for me! You—you—lying, terrible creature, it is

yourself you should feel sorry for, for your evil ways will lead you to

damnation and hellfire—”

“I’m not the one with evil ways,” I said, still in the calm, certain voice that I

knew roused her to fury, and yet I could not stop myself. She was wrong; I was

right; and though I knew enough of the world to realize that that guaranteed me

nothing, still I could not bear to back down from a stance I knew was proper.

“Your son is the liar, and your son is the unkind one, and he is the one who

would face damnation and hellfire, if there were such things awaiting us after

death, which there are not—”

I had not thought she could grow angrier or more red-faced, but at this heresy

she did both, stamping her foot this time in earnest. “Godless child!” she

shrieked, for she worshiped most devotedly at the Church of the Five Saviors.

“To insult me— and my son—and then to scoff at the Lords themselves—”

Jerret had lost interest in our argument a few strophes ago, for he was now

spooning up food with great concentration, but at this he said, “Stupid

PanEquist. Now you really will die and go to hell.”

“Go! Before I call one of the servants in to throw you in your chamber!” Aunt

Rentley panted. “To your room! And you will not come out, or speak to a soul,

until I grant you permission! Now out! Out!”

I laid my fork on the table with great deliberation, stood quite slowly, and

nodded my head most gravely in her direction. “I am glad to go,” I said, and

headed with dignity out the door.

Soon enough I was back in my room, a small, ill-lit chamber on the third

floor, a level below the servants but nowhere near the family suites. A few

guest bedrooms could be found on this story, though they had never been used in

my experience, and a schoolroom, some storage rooms, and an infinite number

of closets. There were days mine were the only feet to patter down the

corridor—weeks, even. I could be banished here and completely forgotten, and

my bones might not be found till a new tenant moved in and began exploring.

I climbed to the middle of my bed and sat, looking around at the forbidding

gray walls. This had always been a haven to me, a place where neither Jerret

nor Aunt Rentley would bother to come to torment me. But to stay here till I

starved… even my stubborn soul quailed at that. Surely Betista would not let

such a fate befall me. Surely even Aunt Rentley would at some point remember

my existence.

I sat for a few moments unmoving, my heart heavy and my thoughts bleak,

then I shook my head and looked around me for distractions. Books were my

constant solace, for Jerret monopolized the StellarNet computer screen that

offered us entertainment and a view on the events of the Allegiance, but he was

not much of a reader. Neither was Aunt Rentley, and the only reason the house

held any books at all was that the former tenant had left behind an entire library

of very rare volumes, and Aunt Rentley had been too selfish to sell them. She

knew that people she respected placed a high value on actual books, and so she

liked to have them about her, but I was the true beneficiary. I would creep down

to the library, steal a volume from its overloaded shelves, and spirit it up to my

room to be read at leisure. I had devoured many of the classics of Baldus and

the Allegiance, and I considered all the great authors of the day my personal

friends.

But when I opened the drawer on my nightstand, the item that I first

encountered was not a novel but a treatise on the PanEquist philosophy, which I

had been studying for some weeks. Betista had given it to me, whispering an

admonition to keep it hidden from my aunt, and we had talked it over with great

animation when we had a few moments alone in the kitchen. I had heard of the

PanEquists, of course, for on those rare occasions when I did get a chance to

browse over the StellarNet, they were often to be found on the news sites. But

until I had read this tract, I had had no clear idea what their beliefs were and

how they viewed the world.

Though I had no real need to refresh my memory, I perused the pamphlet

again, starting at the beginning and reading with great pleasure the articles of

belief. “Whereas the Goddess is an infinite Goddess, a Goddess of all places,

all planets, all peoples; whereas the Goddess created every creature, from the

simplest invisible microbe to the most complex member of mankind; whereas

the Goddess created not only the animals of the universe, but the trees, the

rocks, the soil, and the water; we believe that the Goddess loves each of these

things equally, that there is no difference between one being and another, one

atom or another; that all things are the same and all things are equal. Thus I am

no more important to the Goddess than the spider on the wall or the exploding

fire of the nearest star; we are one, and we are the same in the eyes of the

Goddess.”

Yes—exactly—in so many words were put down the feelings I had had since

childhood but not known how to articulate. Aunt Rentley believed I was inferior

because of the manner of my creation; the government believed I was invisible

because of my undesirable legal status; Jerret believed I was insignificant

because he could hurt me, and torment me, and buy things I would never be able

to own. But I was the equal to all of them in the Goddess’s eyes. I was fully

human, fully alive, fully integrated into the source and flow of the universe. I

belonged here; my breath and my molecules and the blood in my body were

revered by the great spirit of the universe. It was the PanEquists who saw the

truth, and so I was one of them, heart and soul, in secret, and in exultation.

I was in my room five days before anyone remembered my existence. The

first two days I was hungry, and I prowled the room looking for forgotten cakes

and crackers that I might have left carelessly behind on some more provident

day. I had plenty of water, for I had my own small bathroom where I could

refresh myself daily, so thirst was not a problem; and hunger was only a

problem for a while. By the third day, I was listless but not unhappy. My

stomach no longer roared and pleaded for food—indeed, I was indifferent to the

very thought of eating. By the fourth day, I cared even less about the missed

meals. I was feeling light, wispy, fanciful, and odd, but not hungry. I spent a

good deal of time sitting at my single window, watching the foreign roses shiver

in the hostile breezes, and wondering which of us would die first.

I also watched the cars pulling up the long, graded drive, for this was the day

of Jerret’s party, and every notable member of Aunt Rentley’s acquaintance was

arriving to celebrate. I had a deep interest in things mechanical, and so I

watched with interest as each new model arrived. There was the Stratten

Aircar, a marvel when it had been introduced, but considered inefficient and

cumbersome now; there was the sleeker, more powerful Killiam version, which

could circle the planet without the need for maintenance or refueling. I pressed

my face against the glass to get a better look at the Organdie Elite and the

Vandeventer II, and for one of the few times in my life I was envious of others.

Sounds and scents of the party drifted up to my level as the hours went by. I

heard laughter, music, shrieks of merriment from the children who had been

invited, the lower rumble of adult voices in both serious and comical

conversation. There were to be games played on the south lawns, but my

window faced north, so I could not even watch these activities. And once the

sunlight faded, there was nothing to see out my window at all, not even the

comings and goings of the great aero-mobiles. I sighed, and returned to my bed.

I lay there, sniffing with disembodied pleasure the faint smells of the grand

banquet being laid out below. I could imagine the fruits, meats, vegetables,

pastries, and other fine dishes being sampled and exclaimed over, but I was so

far removed from hunger that I did not care that I had no chance to sample them.

The banquet—indeed, the party—seemed to go on well into the night. I lay

dreamily on my bed, envisioning the lazy good nature of the guests as they

reached the midnight hour of reveling. They would be smiling through their

yawns, and patting their full stomachs, and crying out to one another, “By Lord

Yerni’s bones! It must be time for us to be going!” And yet they would stay for

one more slice of cake, another moment’s gossip, a final good-bye to the

hostess who had presented such an elegant affair. Even when I sensed the house

beginning to empty, saw the headlights of the aircars traveling across the ceiling

of my room, I could not summon the energy to rise to my feet and cross to the

window again. I lay on the bed, imagining the slow exodus, and smiled to

myself at the grand sight it must be.

I was still smiling the next morning when they found me, and I was still too

weak to rise to my feet, and eventually all the bustle and riot that surrounded me

grew too great for my brain to sort out, and so I closed my eyes and slept.

I had not been to a hospital before, and so I was fascinated with the

machinery. There was equipment in my room, attached to me; there was

equipment down every hallway, connected by cords to other patients or plugged

into unfamiliar sockets on the walls. Everything beeped, hummed, flashed, and

monitored with such a lovely, brilliant array of signals that I could not stop

watching and trying to understand. My night nurse, a cyborg, caught my interest

early on, and explained the functions of various machines. She even taught me

how to study my own readouts and determine my progress.

Which was unfathomably slow. I had not expected to waken in a hospital in

any case; most household illnesses were diagnosed in the PhysiChamber, a

closet-size computer-controlled room where all the functions of the body could

be scanned and analyzed. In point of fact, I had rarely had occasion to be tucked

inside this room, since I was seldom sick and what few ailments I had

succumbed to had never been deemed serious. Jerret and Aunt Rentley, on the

other hand, used it on an almost weekly basis to check the state of their health.

But a hospital—that bespoke a real state of emergency. I could not believe a

few days without food had reduced me to such a state. Which I observed to the

cyborg.

“Is that what the trigger was?” she asked in her pleasant, neutral voice. She

was nearly eighty percent machine, from what I could tell; her face was

attractive but not particularly expressive, and her touch was preternaturally

gentle. Obviously I was in a half-cit ward; no cyborg would be allowed to

nurse a full citizen. “Starvation?”

“Does five days make starvation?” I wanted to know.

She adjusted one of the dials while I watched. “Not for a healthy adult, but

for a malnourished child, that’s a dangerous period of time to pass without

eating.”

“I had water,” I offered.

She nodded. “That’s why you’re still alive.”

“I’ve gone hungry before,” I said.

She nodded again. “Many times. And been physically mistreated. The

doctors are asking your aunt about these abuses. There is also a legal

representative present.”

My eyes opened wide at this. I could not imagine my aunt reacting kindly to

any inquiries about her treatment of me. “I am only a half-cit,” I said.

“That status only prevents you from attaining certain property-oriented

goals,” she said, still in that precise, unemotional voice. “It does not allow

others to harm or neglect you.”

“You’re a cyborg, aren’t you?” I asked. Such creatures had not come my way

often, at least not to talk to. Aunt Rentley had a force of maybe eight who

maintained the grounds and worked her scant arable fields, but they were never

allowed inside the house and I had never had a real conversation with one of

them. They were considered lower than the half-cits, and many people were

actually afraid of them. Certainly my aunt was.

The nurse nodded. Her hair was more perfectly coiffed than any human’s hair

would be; her skin had a flawless, elastic look to it that made it appear melted

over her bones. If she had bones. Perhaps it was a metal framework beneath the

layer of supposed flesh.

“Cyborg, but human enough to be happy,” she said, smiling. It was a slow,

Sharon Shinn - Jenna Starborn

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