Free Child of Venus by Pamela Sargent

was done in her name, but I know better. She didn’t want to answer to others for what she allowed to happen. Her own brother Dyami might have been one of the witnesses against her.”
    Mahala said, “I’m going.”
    â€œLeave, and you’ll never know the truth. Your grandmother will never tell it to you.”
    Mahala’s ears throbbed; her mouth was so dry that she could not swallow. It had happened long ago, Risa would say; it had nothing to do with her.
    â€œI was in Chimene’s house when Boaz was brought to her,” Lakshmi said. “We’d been hiding for days during the uprising, afraid to go outside. Chimene wept when she saw Boaz—she kept telling him how much she loved him. I still didn’t quite understand what was happening. She was saying that she knew Boaz was plotting her death, that he’d been using her for his own ends, but that she would give him a chance to repent. She had to forgive him—I was certain she would, that it would all turn out to be a mistake. She was my sister in Ishtar, and he was my lover—it would all work out in the end.”
    Lakshmi leaned across the table; her hand snaked out and closed around Mahala’s
wrist. “Galina Kolek, one of Chimene’s housemates, was with us. Galina was a physician.
She was the one who gave Boaz the drug, but it was at your mother’s orders. She gave him
something that produces a kind of paralysis. The men who brought him to her had to hold him down
while Galina—”
    â€œIt isn’t true!”
    Lakshmi’s fingers dug into her arm. “It’s true. It took him a long
time to die. I don’t know how long, because Galina gave me an injection to keep me
tranquilized, but I was still awake, I saw it all. Chimene kept talking to him while he struggled
for breath, while he lay there knowing that his lungs and heart would eventually fail him. Chimene
was telling him that she forgave him, that his death would bring him peace, that his child and hers
was already growing in an artificial womb, that—” Mahala screamed.
    â€œBe quiet! You wanted to know the truth. I hated Chimene for tormenting him like that, for taking his life. Later, I came to hate him, too. Those were your parents, child. They were everything I loved, everything I thought was beautiful and fine, and they ruined me. It was all deception and lies, just an illusion, and when it was gone, I had nothing left. And your grandmother’s gone on hiding what really happened with her own lies. I don’t care what others believe, but you ought to know the truth.”
    Mahala struggled to her feet. “You look like them,” Lakshmi whispered. “It’s strange—you don’t have any of their beauty, but I see them in you. It’s as if you’re a distorted image of your mother. You shouldn’t be alive at all; Risa should never have chosen to bring you up. She should have let every part of them die. Then maybe all of those people your mother and her cult wounded so deeply could forget.”
    Mahala ran from the house.

    She came to the road and stumbled along it until Risa’s house was in sight. The dome was growing darker; people in the nearby houses set back from the road were calling to children or greeting returning bondmates. Her grandmother and grandfather were probably inside their house with Dyami, assuming his airship had arrived on time and had not made any unscheduled stops. They would be sitting around and talking, as if everything was the same as before.
    She could not go home, not now. Mahala turned toward the tunnel that led to the main dome.
    She walked through the long lighted passageway. A knot of people had gathered near one wall to talk; others were hurrying home. A cart carrying two workers and tied-down stacked crates rolled slowly toward her; Mahala moved to the side. A woman’s voice called out her name; she kept going, past a stretch of wall