She caught her breath. It adapts. And she had adapted. Even if her clone didn’t have a brain, presumably she had adaptability. “So that’s all I am? A seed blown on the wind?”
He snorted. “Seed on wind and being adaptable. Same as me, Ellin. Same as everybody. All of us, seeds. Seed is ninety percent precursor mammal, like mouse. Seven or eight percent chimpanzee-human primate precursor. One point nine nine nine percent generalized Homo sapiens. Tiny fraction one percent me, or you, different from everybody else. One healthy creature being able to blow on wind and still live! Able to choose.”
He threw up his hands, scowled at her, then patted her foot with a gesture that was pleasant without being in the least threatening. There, there, he seemed to say. Settle down.
“Oh, go away,” she said, turning to bury her face in the pillow. “Very soon we’ll be meeting that other ship, and I don’t want to be all messed up in a frangle with you about my identity—or lack of it!”
“Lacking of it?” He grinned. “I make it rule only to talk to identities. Stop fretting and sleep.”
Though unconvinced by anything he had said, shortly after he shut the door, she slept.
Back in his own stateroom, however, Gandro Bao did not sleep. Instead he stared into the mirror, his brows tented in query, one nostril lifted, as though scenting a trail. “Here I am being helpful,” he murmured to himself. “Lecturing all about roots and growing in space where is nothing to grow on. Maybe is being only wind under us, and no place for us to hold to? Who is this Bao Bao Down to be giving Ellin Voy small contentments, like mama giving cookies?”
He smoothed his face, making it expressionless, calm, accepting. “Demand much of yourself and little from others,” he quoted to himself from the analects. “You will prevent discontent.”
That would have to do, for tonight.
24—Harassments
Bane and Dyre began harassing Mouche the moment they were moved into Consorts’ quarters, as they had to be very soon, for the protection of the new students. “Dirt rubs off,” as Madame was wont to say, and with Bane and Dyre dirt took all forms from attitudinal, to behavioral, to linguistic.
At first the two of them merely placed themselves within Mouche’s view and stared endlessly, the lidless stare of serpents. Mouche ignored them. Within a few days, Simon had them so busy they had no time for staring.
Nights were still free, however, so they moved from covert threat to overt violence. One night, as Mouche was returning to his suite, Bane and Dyre leapt out at him from behind a protruding pillar, grimacing in theatrical fashion, mouthing their intentions in voices far too loud for secrecy, and with knives snaking from between their fingers. The assault was interrupted by Fentrys and Tyle, who came around the corner too late or just in time, depending on one’s point of view. They were all wounded by the time it was over, and it took all three of them to put the two brothers down and send them off, bloody but still threatening.
“What started that?” Fentrys wanted to know.
“I told you about Duster,” Mouche said, dabbing at a cut on his hand. “Those two did it, and they recognized me the first day they were here. Now they want to punish me for what they did.”
“Well,” said Tyle, “if they’re that sort, they’ll want to punish all three of us. We’d better travel in company for a time, to watch one another’s backs.”
And so they did, sticking so tight with each other or around the instructors that they thwarted several more attempts at violence. Simon, whose job required keen observation, noted this collective stance almost immediately, but it took him several days to determine the cause. At that point Simon took an early opportunity to call Mouche aside and have an informal conference.
“What is this?” Simon asked the boy, after seating both of them comfortably in Simon’s quarters and pouring two glasses of wine.
“Those two used to live near my family’s farm,” said Mouche. “They killed my dog. Worse, they made poor Duster suffer!”