Free Child of Venus by Pamela Sargent Page B

needed repairs at the last minute. I got a message to Risa and Sef saying that I’d be late, but when did you ever know an airship to be right on time?” He touched her hand lightly. “Do they know you’re here?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell them where you were going?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen Risa will be worried sick. She’ll be calling friends and asking who might have seen you, even putting a message on the public channels about you.”
    â€œA woman told me all about my parents. She said Chimene was a murderer and Boaz was a traitor. She told me everything about them. Risa lied to me.”
    Dyami drew her to him. “Who told you this?”
    â€œHer name’s Lakshmi—Lakshmi Tiris. She said she used to live with my mother. She told me I shouldn’t even be alive.”
    He scowled. “That’s a hateful thing to say.”
    â€œMy mother killed my father—that’s what she said. She hates them and she hates me. You were a prisoner—maybe you hate me, too.”
    â€œNo, Mahala—you mustn’t think that.” He held her more tightly. “Please believe this—without you, everything would have been much harder for Risa and Sef. Risa thought for a long time about what she should do, but she’s never regretted choosing to bring you home. My parents love you, and if they didn’t tell you everything they knew about your parents, it was only because they were trying to protect you.”
    A sob wrenched itself from her, and then she was crying as she clung to him. Dyami held her until her sobs subsided. “Mahala.” He wiped her face with his sleeve. “Let me ask you a question. What woman does this monument honor?”
    â€œThat’s silly.” She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. “My great-grandmother, of course.”
    â€œYour great-grandmother. Iris Angharads. You should remember that, Mahala. There’s something of her in you, too.” He sat down and draped an arm over one knee. “Some people in our line are admirable, and others did shameful things, and that only makes you very much like everyone else. You can take pride in some of your people and feel ashamed of others, but in the end you have to make your own life. What your ancestors did may cast a shadow, but you can choose to move into the light.”
    â€œDyami?” She looked up at him. “Why didn’t you ever move back to Oberg?”
    â€œMost of the people I was imprisoned with live in Turing. We have other settlers, of course, but they’re the ones I’m closest to. I’ll be honest—I feel easier around such people. I trust them, because I know what they are, how they behaved when we were prisoners. They had some courage. You can’t say the same about some of the people here. A lot of them may be sorry for what happened, but they didn’t stand against it at the time.”
    â€œYou don’t live in Turing because of me?”
    â€œNo, Mahala. I’ll admit that, in the beginning, I wanted nothing to do with any child of my sister’s. Everything in me seemed dead after I was freed—maybe you’ll understand why someday, when you’re old enough to view the records of the hearings held after the Revolt I felt little after learning that Chimene and Boaz were dead, only relief that they would no longer trouble us, and then Sef told me about the child they had stored, who was gestating. I was bitter about that, angry that Risa and Sef would even consider bringing such a child into their household. Risa waited before having you brought to term because she was afraid that, if she took you in, she would lose me.” He sat up and slipped an arm over her shoulders. “That bitterness left me when I first saw you. That was when I knew that Risa had done the right thing.”
    They were silent for a while. At last Dyami nudged her. “It would be good to sit