Chapter 13: The Grudge — Part 9

“For those fortunate enough to have eyes, you can always open them and look around.” Bamboo sounded terse, perhaps stern.

Bamboo left her then, mildly irritated with Nikkei’s decision to be so invasive. Jun, Bamboo sensed, had been listening and watching in the distance. Jun was curious, honestly about Nikkei’s intentions. She didn’t feel jealous like she should, something about Nikkei always seemed to keep her from being jealous. But she could tell that Bamboo found Nikkei’s behavior, if not disturbing, then perhaps bothersome. She found herself squeezing Bamboo’s hands as she talked, feeling things for the man she had never felt before.

“She seemed to enjoy kissing you, until the end.” Jun’s voice was almost a growl.

Bamboo smiled. “She took what she wanted, and she’s not happy about it. I think Swift would say that she is very much so hume in that regard. Will you take dinner with me, Jun?” Bamboo asked.

“Of course I will.” Jun said, squeezing his hand gently.

After lunch and dinner, and for every day thereafter, Jun and Bamboo made love, then retired to the training square to practice their skills. Some days the lovemaking was passionate, some days desperate. At some point it became fruitful, because Jun’s period stopped. Some three months after Nikkei’s kiss, Jun began to show. In a more or less normal amount of time after that, Jun gave birth to a son, who they named Ren, and who shared Jun’s blue skin. Nikkei, Bamboo, Jun, and Orchid sat in a conference some weeks after the child’s birth, with Yap in quiet attendance as well. Jun cooed her child as any mother would, as if a life of violence and pain had never been her own. Life seemed peaceful, even comfortable in the Manor, though to at least one person, things were not as they should be.

Yap, having a longer perspective of time than humes, began to tabulate, to observe, and to act on her observations. She did this first in subtle ways, a form of underlying motivation that was too refined for hume ogbservation. When her nearly unconscious attempts failed, turning months into years without the desired results, Yap reviewed her behavior. She cornered Orchid on a quiet day, when the woman wasn’t too engrossed in either politics or research, to point out her observations, and act more directly on the source of her concerns.

“Of all the women,” Yap said, “You alone seem to have been spared the blessing of a child.”

“Blessing or curse depending on how simple the mind.” Orchid countered. “Nikkei has been spared pushing the pounds out from between her legs. You wouldn’t know it the way she dotes over that child of yours though.”

“Ah yes.” Yap said, adding the very un-android comment. “I had forgotten her.”

Orchid turned slowly toward Yap, her eyes suddenly glazed over with incomprehension. “You sleep with her almost every night.”

“Perhaps that is why I forget.” Yap said, her choice of words careful.

Though Orchid could probably press the issue, find out what had Yap so circumspect and conveniently forgetful, she let the conversation change. Androids, after all, could never really forget anything, and they could be virtually incapable of forming a direct lie. Yap had merely failed to consider a misconception in discussion, or she had assumed a fact, or ignored it, rather than forgotten it entirely.

Yap held a small amount of quiet conversation, dismissing herself seven minutes after the conversational anomaly occurred. Seven minutes, Orchid had long ago learned, was the amount of time androids and sentient robots were predisposed to believe that most humes would forget about something in a conversation that would otherwise have stuck in their minds. Orchid, in not being anything like most humes, would not let go of such details so easily, and the seven-minute gap between the comment and Yap’s leaving acted as a red flag in her consciousness. Orchid would wait, watch, and learn. It would take years, however, for the error in communications to expose its roots.