She nodded, holding his eyes for a long moment. "Yes," she said. "I know."
He took Katrin the Fair in his arms and kissed her. There was a moment’s stiff surprise, and then she began to laugh, helpless peals bursting against his lips. He held her for a moment, too surprised to react, and then she broke free. She reeled along the wall, leaning for support against the old stones. Davout followed, babbling, "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-"
She leaned back against the wall. Words burst half-hysterical from her lips, in between bursts of desperate, unamused laughter. "So that’s what you were after! My God! As if I hadn’t had enough of you all after all these years!"
"I apologize," Davout said. "Let’s forget this happened. I’ll take you home."
She looked up at him, the laughter gone, blazing anger in its place. "The Silent One and I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for you-for our sibs!" She flung her words like daggers, her voice breaking with passion. "You lot were the eldest, you’d already parceled out the world between you. You were only interested in psychology because my damned Red sib and your Old one wanted insight into the characters in their histories, and because you and your dark bitch wanted a theory of the psyche to aid you in building communities on other worlds. We only got created because you were too damned lazy to do your own research!"
Davout stood, stunned. No he signed, "That’s not-"
"We were third," she cried. "We were born in third place. We got the jobs you wanted least, and while you older sibs were winning fame and glory, we were stuck in work that didn’t suit, that you’d cast off, awarded to us as if we were charity cases-" She stepped closer, and Davout was amazed to find a white-knuckled fist being shaken in his face. "My husband was called The Silent because his sibs had already used up all the words! He was third-rate and knew it! It destroyed him! Now he’s plugging artificial satisfaction into his head because it’s the only way he’ll ever feel it."
"If you didn’t like your life," Davout said, "you could have changed it. People start over all the time-we’d have helped." He reached toward her. "I can help you to the stars, if that’s what you want."
She backed away. "The only help we ever needed was to get rid of you!" A mudra, har-de-har-har, echoed the sarcastic laughter on Fair Katrin’s lips. "And now there’s another gap in your life, and you want me to fill it-not this time."
Never her fingers echoed. Never. The laughter bubbled from her throat again.
She fled, leaving him alone and dazed on the palace wall, as the booming wind mocked his feeble protests.
"I am truly sorry," Red Katrin said. She leaned close to him on the porch swing, touched soft lips to his cheek. "Even though she edited her downloads, I could tell she resented us-but I truly did not know how she would react."
Davout was frantic. He could feel Katrin slipping farther and farther away, as if she were on the edge of a precipice and her handholds were crumbling away beneath her clawed fingers.
"Is what she said true?" he asked. "Have we been slighting them all these years? Using them, as she claims?"
"Perhaps she had some justification once," Red Katrin said. "I do not remember anything of the sort when we were young, when I was uploading Fair Katrin almost every day. But now…" Her expression grew severe. "These are mature people, not without resources or intelligence-I can’t help but think that surely after a person is a century old, any problems that remain are her fault."
As he rocked on the porch swing he could feel a wildness rising in him. My God, he thought, I am going to be alone.
His brief days of hope were gone. He stared out at the bay-the choppy water was too rough for any but the most dedicated water-skaters-and felt the pain pressing on his brain, like the two thumbs of a practiced sadist digging into the back of his skull.
"I wonder," he said. "Have you given any further thought to uploading my memories?"
She looked at him curiously. "It’s scarcely time yet."
"I feel a need to share… some things."
"Old Davout has uploaded them. You could speak to him."
This perfectly intelligent suggestion only made him clench his teeth. He needed sense made of things, he needed things put in order, and that was not the job of his sib. Old Davout would only confirm what he already knew.
"I’ll talk to him, then," he said.
And then never did.
The pain was worst at night. It wasn’t the sleeping alone, or merely Katrin’s absence: it was the knowledge that she would always be absent, that the empty space next to him would be there forever. It was then that the horror fully struck him, and he would lie awake for hours, eyes staring into the terrible void that wrapped him in its dark cloak, while fits of trembling sped through his limbs.
I will go mad, he sometimes thought. It seemed something he could choose, as if he were a character in an Elizabethan drama who turns to the audience to announce that he will be mad now, and then in the next scene is found gnawing bones dug out of the family sepulcher. Davout could see himself being found outside, running on all fours and barking at the stars.
And then, as dawn crept across the windowsill, he would look out the window and realize, to his sorrow, that he was not yet mad, that he was condemned to another day of sanity, of pain, and of grief.
Then, one night, he did go mad. He found himself squatting on the floor in his nightshirt, the room a ruin around him: mirrors smashed, furniture broken. Blood was running down his forearms.
The door leapt off its hinges with a heave of Old Davout’s shoulder. Davout realized, in a vague way, that his sib had been trying to get in for some time. He saw Red Katrin’s silhouette in the door, an aureate halo around her auburn hair in the instant before Old Davout snapped on the light.
Afterward Katrin pulled the bits of broken mirror out of Davout’s hands, washed and disinfected them, while his sib tried to reconstruct the green room and its antique furniture.
Davout watched his spatters of blood stain the water, threads of scarlet whirling in coreolis spirals. "I’m sorry," he said. "I think I may be losing my mind."
"I doubt that." Frowning at a bit of glass in her tweezers.
"I want to know."
Something in his voice made her look up. "Yes?"
He could see his staring reflection in her green eyes. "Read my downloads. Please. I want to know if… I’m reacting normally in all this. If I’m lucid or just…" He fell silent. Do it, he thought. Just do this one thing.
"I don’t upload other people. Davout can do that. Old Davout, I mean."
No, Davout thought. His sib would understand all too well what he was up to.
"But he’s me!" he said. "He’d think I’m normal!"
"Silent Davout, then. Crazy people are his specialty."
Davout wanted to make a mudra of scorn, but Red Katrin held his hands captive. Instead he gave a laugh. "He’d want me to take Lethe. Any advice he gave would be… in that direction." He made a fist of one hand, saw drops of blood well up through the cuts. "I need to know if I can stand this," he said. "If-something drastic is required."
She nodded, looked again at the sharp little spear of glass, put it deliberately on the edge of the porcelain. Her eyes narrowed in thought-Davout felt his heart vault at that look, at the familiar lines forming at the corner of Red Katrin’s right eye, each one known and adored.
Please do it, he thought desperately.
"If it’s that important to you," she said, "I will."
"Thank you," he said.
He bent his head over her and the basin, raised her hand, and pressed his lips to the flesh beaded with water and streaked with blood.
It was almost like conducting an affair, all clandestine meetings and whispered arrangements. Red Katrin did not want Old Davout to know she was uploading his sib’s memories-"I would just as soon not deal with his disapproval"-and so she and Davout had to wait until he was gone for a few hours, a trip to record a lecture for Cavor’s series on Ideas and Manners.
She settled onto the settee in the front room and covered herself with her fringed shawl. Closed her eyes. Let Davout’s memories roll through her.
He sat in a chair nearby, his mouth dry. Though nearly thirty years had passed since Dark Katrin’s death, he had experienced only a few weeks of that time; and Red Katrin was floating through these memories at speed, tasting here and there, skipping redundancies or moments that seemed inconsequential…
He tried to guess from her face where in his life she dwelt. The expression of shock and horror near the start was clear enough, the shuttle bursting into flames. After the shock faded, he recognized the discomfort that came with experiencing a strange mind, and flickering across her face came expressions of grief, anger, and here and there amusement; but gradually there was only a growing sadness, and lashes wet with tears. He crossed the room to kneel by her chair and take her hand. Her fingers pressed his in response… she took a breath, rolled her head away… he wanted to weep not for his grief, but for hers.