Father Depends on Me

“Until tomorrow,” Mori said. “At most.”

Kit fished the stylus out from beneath the bench and sat back on his heels with it. “Then there’s a lot to show you.”

He was on his feet before anyone had agreed to anything. I took the tour from the far side of every bench. He kept turning to check where I’d gotten to, and I kept being somewhere else.

With Ryu hovering at her elbow, Kathi-1 got up on the second try, and followed in a slow, careful line, one hand trailing along the benches for balance.

“This is the workroom,” Kit said, waving at the six benches pushed together under paper. “Those are the pulse-response tables. Those are the calibrations. Those are also calibrations, a different series.” From where I stood I could see an error in the pulse-response tables, and I kept it to myself, as a courtesy. He tapped the blackboard, where the charts ran edge to edge. “Father needs all of it before the next trial.”

“Father depends on me for this,” he added. “He said so. Right here, on the last one.”

He pulled a sheet out from under a paperweight and held it out, one finger under the line of cramped ink across the bottom. It was a single word: ‘Adequate.’

“In his own hand,” Kit said. “He never writes anything unless he means it.”

I turned the word over once and put it back. Beside me, Kathi-1 had become deeply absorbed in a chart at the end of the blackboard. It was upside down.

“Everyone’s gone home for the break, so I get the whole block,” Kit went on. “It’s quiet. Good for calibrations.”

“And Mother?” I asked the blackboard.

“At the estate. It’s the break.” Then, with no gap at all, “Do you want to see the medal?”

He lifted it out of the velvet case and I took it from him with two fingers, so that the handover didn’t need to involve his hand. It was heavier than it looked. The Crown’s seal was on the face, and on the back the title of the research, and under that the date, and under that, in letters about half the size, his name.

“They said it was a credit to the Crown,” Kit said. “I went to get it. Father came too.”

He took it back and set it inside its case, in the corner of the bench, where it had been. “It’s in the way.”

“These go over tomorrow,” he said next, and lifted the wire tray of red-sealed envelopes with both hands.

“Over where?” said Kathi-1.

“Father’s lab. It’s not far, half an hour by air. I leave them at the gate, he doesn’t like being interrupted.” He nodded at a staff leaning by the door, worn pale at the grip.

“Why not walk?” I said.

“Three hours.” He turned to me. “Do you fly, Kathi-0?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, and I looked at the staff a moment too long. “I find I arrive in better condition on foot.”

Kathi-1 made a small noise and turned it into a cough.

“He’s very busy,” Kit said. “Something went missing out of his study and he’s trying to find it. That’s what the pulse series is for.”

“Missing how?” Kathi-1 asked.

“He didn’t say.”

“Whose pulses?”

It was Kou, at Kit’s wrist.

“Kou’s,” said Kit. “Mine. My Kou.”

“Where is he?”

“With Father, at the lab. Father borrowed him for the experiments.”

“Borrowed,” said Kou. “For how long?”

“He was supposed to be back weeks ago.”

“Did he say when?”

“Father’s very busy.”

“Has anyone asked him?”

“It’s important work,” Kit said. “It’s an honor, really. Not every familiar gets asked.”

Kou asked nothing more, and did not leave Kit’s wrist.

By then Kathi-1 had sat down on a bench with her chin on her chest, and Ryu had arranged himself across her knees as ballast. I had ended up on the floor of my corner at some point.

“You should sleep,” Kit said. “You can nap in my room. It’s in the dormitory, it’s quiet, everyone’s gone, and the bed’s good.”

“Remember,” I told Kathi-1, “we are girls. We cannot go to the boys’ dormitory.”

She opened one eye. “We’re hiding anyway. Why not use the chance to check it out?”

“I told you I’m not going there. Boys are dirty!”

A whole-face one, a laugh came out of Kit, and ran a little past where the joke ended. “It sounds like you’re having a lot of fun,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here? You can nap while I work.”

We leaned our staffs against the wall and made a bed out of the curtains. Kathi-1 did most of it, with a word and a flat hand passed over the heap, and the pile shrugged itself into the shape of a bed and a half. She lay down on it at once.

“Kit hasn’t seen that one,” said Kit. “Kit will be quiet,” he added, to the stylus.

“We’ll take watch in turns,” Mori said. “I’ll take the first.” Upside down, wings folded, facing the corridor, he hooked himself to the lintel above the door.

“Second,” said Kou.

Ryu was already under Kathi-1’s chin. I lay on my side with my back to the room and one arm crooked in front of my chest, leaving a space about the size of a bat. Kou landed above my head, on the folded edge of the curtain, and stayed there.

Across the room, the stylus began to scratch. Under it ran a murmur, steady and unhurried: figures, mostly, and a word every so often to no one. Somewhere between one table and the next it said, clearly, “Kit has until tomorrow,” and went back to figures. It was the last thing I heard.