Carnival

Vincent found the edge of Elena’s wicker chair, sat down on it, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The cosmic irony of the moment didn’t elude him. This child was no more a budding homosexual than Michelangelo was thick-headed, and Vincent had to fold his hands together to keep them from shaking as he thought about Julian embarking on a life of sexual deception so he’d have an option of careers. “No,” he said. “People can be cruel. But being like me isn’t bad. I had to lie about it for a very long time, though, and pretend to be something I wasn’t to keep my job.”

The boy’s eyes were wide. “I thought you were a diplomat because you’re, you know, because you don’t fight.”

It cost Vincent a painful effort to keep the smile off his face. The last thing this fumbling child needed was to think somebody he was looking to as a role model found him amusing. “Things are different on Old Earth,” he said. “Gentle males are…stigmatized. Do you know that word?”

“The stud males run everything and don’t like gentle ones.”

“Yes.”

“Like the other boys make fun of me for playing with numbers.”

“Yes.”

“How come?” An earnest question, not plaintive, as Julian’s hands fell to his sides as he forgot himself enough to step away from the wall.

It deserved an honest answer. “I don’t know.” Which was as honest as he could be. “Your mother says you’re very talented.”

The boy’s skin was dark, darker than Lesa’s if not as dark as Robert’s. In a better light, Vincent wouldn’t have been able to see him blush. “She said that?”

“She did. She asked me if I would sort of be a mentor for you.” Not too much of a stretch, and Vincent didn’t feel bad about it. The child’s mother and father were missing, his sister was under arrest, and if he felt alone and frightened, he didn’t have to feel thatalone and frightened.

Julian glanced over his shoulder toward the door, the sidelong look of somebody operating under a guilty conscience. “Do you know anything about programming quantum arrays?”

“Not a thing,” Vincent admitted. “But I listen well. You can teach me.”

He set his watch to record, and let the boy chatter on about transforms and quantifiable logic and fractal decision trees and a few thousand other things that might as well have been Swahili. No, not even. Urdu,because thanks to Michelangelo’s remarkable—and habitually concealed—gift for languages, Vincent actually spoke a fair amount of Swahili.

In any case, Julian talked, and Vincent made encouraging noises. And before too long, he started to wonder exactly what Julian was doing wandering around the house alone in the middle of the night, when from what Vincent had seen even young males didn’t go about unescorted. Except, of course, during Carnival.

The boy had to pause for breath eventually. “Julian,” Vincent said, “how did you get out of the Blue Rooms to come talk to me? Did somebody give you a pass?”

Julian’s mobile mouth thinned and he shook his head jerkily. “No pass.”

“So how?”

Because as far as Vincent knew there was supposed to be only one route out of the harem, and it was supposed to be guarded. By Agnes, usually, who had been out of the house trying to locate any trace of Lesa and Michelangelo, and whom Elena had just summoned home to help deal with Katya.

“Did you just walk out?”

“My sire showed me,” Julian said, quietly. “There’s a secret stair. I’m not supposed to tell anybody.”

Which explained how Robert had escaped. “Julian,” Vincent said, “I think you’d better go back before your grandmother catches you out of bed.”

“But—”

“It’s okay. I promise we’ll talk some more tomorrow.” He stood up, slouching enough to minimize his height advantage on a kid who hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, and came over to Julian, hunkering down a little to speak to him eye to eye. He put his hand on Julian’s shoulder and felt the boy shudder, as if the companionable contact was a threat.

In his society, a sane reaction. “It’s okay,” Vincent said again. “I’ll help. Right now, we have to get your mom back, and my partner. After that—”

Julian nodded jerkily and stepped back into the doorway. They stared at one another for a moment, and then a moment later Julian sidestepped and was gone.

Kii is restless.

This is not a sensation Kii is any longer accustomed to, and Kii is some time in identifying it. Restlessness is not one of the emotional routines that Kii finds useful in Kii’s work.