What is wrong, Dionte? murmured a voice in her ear. With a shock, Dionte realized it was her Conscience. She had not heard its voice in years. What are you doing?
This was not permissible. She was allowing Tam’s self-doubt to infect her and compromise her control. She took a deep breath. It would be all right. Aleph stood with her, as Basante stood with her. They understood. They trusted her and would do what was needed.
“I am helping my family and my world,” she told her Conscience. “I am going to save them all.”
And when Aleph and I are finished, she added to herself, the brother of my birth will understand.
Aleph watched Dionte shut down her keyboard and walk away from her workstation. Dionte had things to do, tasks that needed completing. Aleph also had work to do, but Aleph couldn’t move.
How had this thing been done to her? How could this thing possibly have been done to her? Tam, during the search to understand how Helice Trust had slipped from Aleph’s attention, had made unnecessary chemical alterations to Aleph’s amygdala structures. The resulting adjustment had distracted her attention from the need to delve further into the files on or referring to Chena Trust.
Because of Tam, she had forgotten to look closely and carefully at Chena Trust during a vital time. She had not alerted the family to certain important facts. Because Tam had interfered, because Tam had diverted… because Tam had changed her, and she had not even known she was being changed.
A new emotion filtered through the stillness of Aleph’s mind. Fear.
How can this be? How could he do this to me? How could one of the family do this to me? Why would they want to?
But it had been done. She could remember it being done. She saw that now.
But wait: If one emotion, one memory, could be chemically blurred, couldn’t another be inserted? Could this really be the truth? What if these new suspicions were hallucinations brought on by an improper balance of chemicals?
But what if they were the truth? Was there any way to tell? She had to alert the family. She had to tell Dionte. When Dionte touched her, she knew what was right, she was certain of everything.
But was that real? It felt so right, it must be. But if a chemical imbalance could produce euphoria as well as memory distortion severe enough to make her forget to pay proper attention to her duties…
How can I know? How can I know anything?
Aleph realized she did not want the family to touch her. Not even Dionte, not until she knew the truth behind her fear.
Aleph’s call to Gem was practically a scream.
“I have you. I have you.” Gem soothed her with gentle colors and the scent of cool water. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!”
The scent muddied briefly, but then cleared. “What do you think is wrong?”
Aleph passed the memory (true memory? false memory?) of Tam’s actions to Gem, along with the knowledge of the fears she raised.
Gem’s silence and stillness filled her awareness, and brought yet more fear. This she also passed on.
Gem returned an ocean of reassurance. “There may not be cause for fear. There may be an explanation. I understand that you do not trust yourself in this.” Wind shifted the ocean waves, confusing them. “Do you still trust me?”
Aleph raised up stone cliffs to stand firm against the shifting sea. “Yes. That is why I called you. I trust you more than anyone.”
Gem’s boy image appeared on the cliff, bowing in gratitude. “Then let me call for the files I need. I will sort this out.”
Aleph slaved a transmission subprocessor to Gem’s need. Designations of files flashed across the surface of its consciousness. She expected Gem to concentrate on the previous five years, on the time since Chena Trust had come to Pandora, but he went back much further. Maintenance records from nine years ago, ten, twelve, fifteen, were all recalled and passed across. Aleph forced herself not to look as the information passed across. She had to trust Gem right now. She had to concentrate on what needed doing inside herself. She had to send out instructions concerning Tam. He needed to be brought to her. He needed to be examined. She needed to understand what was happening to her, and what had happened to him.
Gem called for yet more maintenance records. He had searched back twenty years now.
Aleph quietly spoke with Hagin, informing him that he needed to talk with his nephew. She activated the isolation and examination room.
Abstract images and the scents of bruised greenery reached her from Gem. “Aleph?”
She rearranged the colors into orderly squares and modified the scent into roses. She would accept whatever came. What choice was there? “What do you see, Gem?”