Tapi Ram Olmy walked down the corridor of the centuries-old apartment complex, searching for the floor designator of the Olmy-Secor Triad Family’s unit, as his father had instructed. He found it easily enough. The door was open, showing an interior decorated with the style and taste of the original occupants. He had often studied that period in his father’s life; the triad family had spent only three years in this unit, after being forced out of Alexandria, the second chamber city, in the last stages of the Exiling. And yet his father had always returned to this place, as if it represented home more than any other living space he had had.
Tapi, still fresh to the much more stable world beyond city memory and the crèche, found such devotion curious, but accepted it; whatever his father did, Tapi was sure, was fit and proper.
Olmy stood near the apartment’s single broad window, in a wide room to the right of the entrance. Tapi entered without speaking, waiting to be noticed.
Olmy turned. Tapi, for all of his youth, was discomfited by his father’s appearance. He seemed to have abandoned juvenation, or neglected his periodic supplements. He was thinner, haggard. His eyes seemed to fix on Tapi without seeing him.
“I’m pleased you could come.”
Tapi had pulled every string he could think of to be here, when every available member of the defense forces was on constant duty. He was not about to explain this to his father, however.
“I’m pleased you asked me.”
Olmy approached him, his eyes coming into focus again, looking him over with a loving gaze that pretended to be objective. “Very fine,” he said, observing those little details and embellishments apparant only to one who has lived in a self-designed body. “You’ve done well indeed.”
“Thank you.”
“You carried my message to Garry Lanier, I understand…before he died.”
Tapi nodded. “I regret not serving under him.”
“He was a remarkable man. This…is more awkward than it should be, between two men used to serving the Hexamon…”
Tapi listened intently, head cocked to one side.
“I would like for you to convey my love to your mother. I cannot see her.”
“She’s still isolated,” Tapi said. “I can’t talk to her now, either.”
“But you’ll be seeing her before I will.”
Tapi’s lips tightened on one side, the only acknowledgment of worry.
“I’ll never see either of you again. I can’t explain much more than that…”
“You’ve told me this once before, Father,” Tapi said.
“This time there’s no doubt, no second chances.”
“Pavel Mirsky came back to us,” Tapi said, hoping to make an extreme comparison as a joke. Olmy smiled in a way that chilled him.
“Probably no chance of that, even,” Olmy said.
“Can I ask questions, Father?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
Tapi nodded.
“I couldn’t answer if you did.”
“Can I help in any way?”
Olmy smiled again, this time warmly and with a slight nod. “Yes,” he said. “You’ve been reassigned to Way defense in the seventh chamber.”
“Yes.”
“You can tell me one thing. My research hasn’t borne any fruit here. Do your weapons still attack only Jart or nonhuman objects?”
“They’re not set for human objects. They won’t fire on them.”
“Under any circumstances?”
“We can target them to fire on any object, manually…But there’s little time expected to do any manual targeting.”
“Don’t Olmy said.
“Ser?”
“Just that. Don’t manually target a human object. I will not compromise you any more than that.”
Tapi swallowed and glanced down at the floor. “I must ask one question, Father. You are not working under Hexamon instructions. That much is obvious.” He looked up and reached out to touch his father’s arm. “Whatever you’re doing is for the good of the Hexamon?”
“Yes,” Olmy said. “In the long run, I think it is.”
Tapi backed away. “I can’t hear any more, then. I will do my best to…do this, not do this. Whatever. But if I see any sign, even the…” His anger and confusion were apparent.
Olmy shut his eyes and gripped his son’s hand.
“If you have the least suspicion I’m lying, or working to harm the Hexamon, you target manually.”
Tapi’s face was grim. “Anything else, Ser?”
“You have my blessings,” Olmy said.
“Will I ever know?”
“If there is any way, within my power, to let you know what happened, and why, I will.”
“Are you going to die, Father?”
Olmy shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you wish to tell Mother?”
Olmy handed him a block. “Give this to her.”
Tapi tucked the block into a pocket and moved toward his father, hesitated, and finally put his arms around him, hugging him tightly. “I don’t want you to go, not forever,” Tapi said. “I couldn’t say that to you the last time.” He pulled back and Olmy saw tears on his cheeks.
“My God,” he said softly. “You can cry.”
“It seemed a good thing…”
Olmy touched his son’s tears with a finger, in wonder, and said, “It is. I’ve always regretted losing that.”
They left the apartment together, and Olmy closed the door. They parted in the corridor, saying nothing more, walking quickly in opposite directions.
Your son is very much like you, the Jart commented.
“Too much,” Olmy said.