So we walked through halls that smelled of cinders and battle-musk. It was just vinegary Musk A at the moment, general tension but not panic. Even that was enough to get to Counselor — her antennas were jerking back and forth in little spasms, and her whiskers were constantly shivering. I adjusted my pace to walk beside her, then put out a standard worker pheromone that said, "Just keep going, it’ll be fine."

The smell seemed to help: a moment later, she wrapped one of her thin brown arms in mine. "Thank you, Teelu," she murmured, before the guards Jushed her into silence.

We turned down a side corridor and headed for a ramp to the second floor. This was the way to the royal infirmary, where I’d spent my last year on Troyen. As we climbed, whiffs of Mandasar blood began to overpower the stench of burned Balrog. By the smell of it, the infirmary was still very much in business, caring for an awful lot of sick and wounded. A middle-aged gentle stopped our party at the top of the ramp, scolding the soldiers for bringing filthy humans into a hospital area. Did they want us to infect the place with our awful alien germs? It took our corporal a full thirty seconds to break into her tirade, as he mumbled in Mandasar, "Please, Doctor… please, Doctor… please, Doctor… we must see Gashwan right away."

"Gashwan’s busy," the gentle finally said. "She hasn’t got time to waste on trivialities."

"But, Doctor… but, Doctor… but, Doctor…"

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. "Teeshpodin Ridd ha Wahlisteen pim," I said, trying not to feel sheepish at putting on airs. I am the Little Father Without Blame. "Gashwan himayja, sheeka mo." We must see Gashwan, if you please.

The gentle turned to me, anger on her face. It was the first time she’d seen me clearly — our only light came from the corporal’s lantern, and I’d been standing quietly back in the shadows. For a heartbeat I was sure the doctor would start hollering about dirty hume disease carriers; but her eyes opened wide, and her whiskers trembled. "Teelu" she whispered.

Mandasars gasped up and down the corridor; I nearly gasped with them. It was one thing for Gelestian kids to make the mistake of calling me, "Your Majesty"… but this woman should have known better. I wasn’t a queen, I was a consort. Addressing me as Teelu was like prostrating yourself before the royal plumber.

"Please," I told her, then got all flustered as I tried to think of a nice way to say she should watch her words. But the woman got the wrong idea from my hesitation.

"Yes, Teelu" she replied, whiskers still fluttering. "At once, Teelu." She scuttled off into the next room.

"Um," I said to the rest of the crowd. "Sorry."

"Don’t apologize, Teelu" Counselor whispered to me.

"You really shouldn’t call me that," I told her. "It’s only for queens."

"And you," she said, with no hesitation.

"Jush," muttered one of the guards. But he didn’t sound as tough and confident as before. He might have been wondering if he’d get in trouble for bossing around a queen’s consort. In a way, it was funny — Black Epaulettes were coming to slaughter us all, and these guys were afraid I might yell at them.

"It’s okay," I told them in Mandasar. "No one’s going to get mad at you."

"York," Festina said sharply in English, "I’d be more comfortable if you kept to a language I understand."

She held her stun-pistol not quite aiming at me, not quite aiming away. (The soldiers hadn’t tried to take the gun away from her… lucky for them.) But I wasn’t half so upset by the stunner as I was by her tone of voice — so hard and icy. Festina was mad at me; really, really mad. She’d seen me turn on the anchor then smash it, and she thought I’d betrayed her. Worst of all, I could only have done that bad stuff if I was in cahoots with Prope.

I think that’s what made Festina so furious. She might forgive me if I did something careless or stupid… but not if I was the least little bit tied in with Captain Prope.

Um.

An elderly gentle shuffled out of the infirmary, so old her brown shell had darkened nearly black. Every step she took seemed an effort; she grunted as she walked, and each heaving breath turned whistly in her nose.

Now I remembered: her nose. Dr. Gashwan had always had a wicked scar running the length of her snout, as if someone once stuck a knife tip into a nostril and yanked it all the way back to her cheek. It was an ancient wound from her youth; but even in the dim lanternlight, the ugly mark was still very visible.

Beside me, Festina lifted a hand to her own face.

"Gashwan," Plebon said. He bowed, but the old woman ignored him. Instead, she shuffled past everyone till she stopped in front of me.

"Edward York," she cooed in English. "My one and only son."

Leaning forward, she nuzzled me on the lips.

I blinked. The kiss was almost exactly like Counselor’s back on Celestia — a human gesture imitated by an alien. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak; but Festina asked the question that was on my mind. "Son? What do you mean, son?"

"He’s my child," Gashwan answered, her eyes glittering. "I made him."

"You?" said Festina. "You were the engineer?"

Gashwan lifted one of her wrinkled hands and patted my cheek fondly. If I hadn’t been so frozen with horror, I would have flinched away.

Dad had never revealed who engineered Sam and me… but it only made sense that he went to someone on Troyen. He knew people here; the doctors were the best in the galaxy; and Mandasar medical facilities could ignore stuffy Technocracy laws about gene-tinkering.

Years later, when Sam needed a doctor for Innocence and me, it probably wasn’t coincidence she’d gone straight to Gashwan.

"You’ve turned out nicely," Gashwan purred. She’d taken my chin in her hands and was tipping my head from one side to the other: examining her work. "Still perfect, aren’t you, boy?"

"I’m okay," I mumbled.

She smiled. "So much like your father when I knew him. The same look. The same attitude."

I did some quick arithmetic. My father was a hundred and twenty-one now, still hale and hearty thanks to YouthBoost. He must have been in his mid-sixties when Sam and I were whipped up in a test tube. His original mission to Troyen was thirty years before that… which must have been when he first met Gashwan. Maybe she’d been a young medical researcher, eager to learn about the human metabolism. Mandasar doctors loved to study aliens.

"Well," Gashwan said, still looking at me keenly, "I’m proud of the way you turned out. Very presentable… for a human."

"But you made a mistake on me," I told her. "I’m stupid. My brain doesn’t work right."

"Your brain works exactly according to specification," she said. "I agree, it wasn’t fair; but your father promised you’d have a fine life, brought up so you’d never know you were different. That’s the only reason I said yes when Alexander asked to make you the way you are."

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. "Dad asked you to make me… slow?"

"Oh, Edward," she chided. "Do you think I’d mess up your brain by accident?"

"But why?" I whispered.

"So you wouldn’t get in your sister’s way," Gashwan answered. "If you were smart enough to figure out how the admiral wanted to use you…" She shook her head. "You’d never have gone along. But things turned out all right, didn’t they? You’re here and you’re fine."

"But… but…"

There were no words inside my brain. No words. They’d been burned clean out of me.

No one had made a mistake. It’d all been completely deliberate. Premeditated. Carefully planned. Yet my whole life, my father had called me a disappointment: rejected me for being the way I was, when he was to blame.