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you wanted a third, one of the others had to leave to make room, leave the ship altogether. “You kept it secret from me. You went to the tank. You planned it all—”
    Her mother took her hands. “It’s not like that, Alia, not at all. We weren’t supposed to tell you the Commonwealth was interested in you.”
    “Why?”
    “In case the Commonwealth didn’t want you after all,” Reath said gently. “You might feel rejected, you see. It is thought to be kinder this way.”
    “But we had to plan,” Bel said. “You see that, don’t you? We thought we would lose you. We had to plan for what would follow.”
    And Alia saw it all now. “So that’s it. The Commonwealth wants to take me away, and that’s an excuse for you to get rid of me and have a new child. You just assume I’m going to go with Reath. With this
stranger.
So you can stay home with this baby.”
    “But it’s a marvelous opportunity,” her father said. “An honor. Anybody would want to go.”
    “You will go,” her mother said. But she glanced at the baby, and there was an edge of panic in her voice. “Won’t you?”
    Reath stood beside Alia, a tall, calm presence. Suddenly she felt closer to him than she did to her own family. He said, “Don’t worry, Alia. It wasn’t supposed to be so difficult. We are all to blame. But I’ve seen enough of you to know that if you come with me you won’t regret it. I’ll take you to places you can’t imagine. The center of the Galaxy—worlds beyond number. You will be trained, your full potential brought out. Your mind will open up like a flower!”
    “But what
for
?”
    “Why, haven’t you worked that out yet?” He smiled. “I want you to become a Transcendent, child.”
    She gaped. “Me?”
    “You’re just the type.”
    To be a Transcendent—it was unimaginable. Her heart was tugged by curiosity, pride—and, yes, by awe. But she was afraid, too. “Can I choose to stay?”
    “Of course,” her father said. But her mother cast increasingly desperate looks at the baby, and Alia knew there was really no choice, none at all.
    Chapter 5
    The news of the disaster had come to me thirdhand, through a friend of a friend of Tom’s. Arriving out of nowhere, it was a punch in the head.
    John acted compassionate and concerned. What a jerk. I always thought that at times of difficulty like this my brother never really got it; he never really felt the deep emotions swirling around, and was never quite capable of understanding what
you
were feeling. He had a role to play in putting things right, a role he fulfilled. But he didn’t get it.
    And nor did his two Happified kids. With their blank, pretty eyes they watched me to see what I would do, as if I were an animal that had been poked with a stick.
    My mother was a more complex case altogether. She fussed around making hot drinks for everybody, her self-control absolutely rigid. But she was hollow inside, and fragile, a china doll that had somehow survived nearly a century. John didn’t feel it at all; my mother felt it, but fought it. So who was more screwed up?
    Anyhow, I had things to do. I escaped to my room.
             
    I sat on my bed, the bed I’d slept in as a child, the bed Tom had used a few times when he stayed here, and spoke into midair, trying to contact my son.
    I couldn’t place a call to Tom’s implants, or to the office he worked out of. The local communications in Siberia were down, and the networks as a whole seemed to be suffering. I imagined a great gouge torn roughly out of the world’s electronic nervous system, waves of pain and shock rippling out, and flocks of counselors, artificial and human, swooping down to help the wounded artificial minds cope with their trauma. Sentience comes as a piece: if you want the smarts you have to accept the self-reflection, the angst.
    And it didn’t help that right now, as was patiently explained to me, all available bandwidth was being gobbled up by the news networks. The