He ignored her tone. “I wonder if Tospia knew? When she left here, when she had the twins, Tospiann and Paniwar, I wonder if she knew one or both of them had been designed by Bernesohn.”
“If they were, he forgot to plan on redundancy. Twin children, one of whom—was it your great-grandmama?—had only one child. And your grandpa, and your father.”
He nodded. “It’s true Great-grandmother Tospiann had only one child, but Paniwar had an acknowledged son and a number of daughters, in addition to at least one … escapade.”
“Improper fathering,” she said, quoting the two dowagers in Fastiga.
He made a rueful face. “An early dalliance with a member of a traveling troupe. On one of the Nantask planets. He was little more than a boy at the time, and she was twice his age.” He was watching Lutha closely, digging at her.
Deja vu. She herself had told this story, as Leelson had told it to her before. She wanted to change the subject, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Her name was Dasalum,” he said. “She was a celebrity, a superb actress. It was her fault Paniwar committed improper fathering. She went off in a temper and the Fambers never did find out what happened to the child.” He watched me, waiting.
A long silence. She could feel him, probing, probing. He’d brought this up for a reason. She resisted, resisted, then cracked, letting in the light. Her revelation hadn’t gone far enough. And she couldn’t lie to him. He’d know if she did.
She said, “In Nantaskan, her name was D’ahslum T’bir, which means bonetree. Skeleton.” She looked at her hand, surprised. All on its own it was drawing a lineage chart in the sand.
“And?” asked Leelson.
“She bore a daughter whose name was Nitha Bonetree.”
“How do you know?”
“I didn’t until just now. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.” Lutha looked away, willing him to let it alone, willing him to stop!
He wouldn’t stop. “And why is that?”
“Because Nitha Bonetree was my great-grandmother.”
He didn’t change expressions. She had told him all about her family when they were together. In the last little while he’d figured everything out, everything she hadn’t put together until now. She looked down at the chart she’d drawn:
She didn’t add Leely’s name. He was out there splashing, making bright fountains. The sun bulged on the sea, a fire blister, scarlet veins bleeding along the horizon. The shaggies reeled in fish, flapping silhouettes against the glow. She wanted to scream, yell, throw things, but the moment was too precarious. Not as she had thought. Not as she had thought at all.
“Now we know how Bernesohn managed to do it,” Leelson said at last. “That’s why he fathered twins. On that old chip we played, he didn’t mean ‘rejoinder’ in a legal sense. He meant ‘rejoindure.’ Rejoindure of his lineage. Half the virus in one line, half in the other. A virus made from Kachis, from Ularian life. One it would have no antibodies against.”
What could she say? What was there to say?
He stared at the dying sun. “Tospia must have known! She was supposed to tell the twins. ‘Daddy invented a weapon, children. Daddy didn’t want to lock it away in a laboratory somewhere, where it might be lost or forgotten or misused—’ “
“Why lost or misused, necessarily?”
“In Bernesohn’s time, the government was … ”
“Mostly non-Fastigat,” she supplied bitterly. “Your great-grand-pop didn’t trust us ordinary people.”
Leelson went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Actually, what he did makes a certain kind of sense. There were still things he needed to find out on Dinadh. He knew he might be killed. He had to provide for that eventuality. He didn’t know what the virus would do to its host. He had no way to test it. So he put half in one zygote, half in the other, depending on Tospia’s pride in her posterity to keep the twins well guarded and protected. If he wasn’t killed, he’d be back on Central long before the twins grew to reproductive age. If he didn’t get back, he knew the twins wouldn’t reproduce with one another! We don’t even reproduce with first cousins very often, so it would be at least two generations before the virus could be reunited. Perhaps Bernesohn had learned enough about Tahs-uppi to know they’d be needed by then …