Wanderlust Read Free Page B

chokes out.

    “Mother?”

    For March’s sake, I make the introduction. “This is Ramona Jax, my mother. Mother, this is March.”

    Let them make of each other what they will.

     
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    CHAPTER 3

    Half an hour later, we’re sitting in a café near what used to be Farwan headquarters, though it’s now the Conglomerate Command Center on New Terra. Few patrons are sitting in the restaurant this time of day, too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The place is done in tones of amber and gold, heavy, fringed shades giving the room a diffuse, smoky glow, frosted by the ice on the outside of the windows.

    It’s eerie. My mother doesn’t look a day older than when I left. Either she didn’t worry about me, or she spent my father’s money on antiaging treatments. My credits, assuming I still have some, are on both.

    “The shock killed him,” she’s saying. “Everywhere he went, someone asked, ‘Isn’t that your daughter?’ when they flashed that horrid picture of you. He just couldn’t take it anymore. I always knew there was something wrong with it, though.”

    “You did?” I’ve barely recovered from her first tactless announcement, and a stabbing pain between my shoulder blades prompts March to regard me with concern.

    Can’t believe nobody told me.

    “You loved working for the Corp. Mary knows you defied everything we wanted for you to do it, so I knew you wouldn’t have run off without a good reason.”

    Heh. She calls everything I went through after the Sargasso “running off.” This fundamental disconnect would be why I left New Terra in the first place. I can’t believe my dad is gone, though it explains her glamorous interpretation of widow’s weeds.

    “No, she wouldn’t,” March puts in.

    I can see Ramona assessing him, trying to figure us out. With a faint half smile, he makes it easy for her by curling his arm around me. I lean in, watching her warily. She wants something, or she wouldn’t be here. But what does she think I can do for her? That’s the question.

    The small talk continues, and she sidles around the subject of the crash and my dead lover, unpleasantness we shouldn’t dwell on, according to her. Ramona does mention that she knows a lovely cosmetic surgeon who could help me with those “unsightly marks” via laser therapy. I set my jaw.

    “No thanks,” I say quietly. “I want to keep them.”

    We’ve been together less than an hour, and already exasperation shows in her tone. “Well, for Mary’s sake, why, Sirantha?”

    “You like to pretend bad things never happen. I prefer to remember, so I won’t make the same mistakes again.” I flick a glance at March. “Besides, guys dig them.”

    He grins. “I do. They make you look dangerous.”

    This place is automated. Most places have a human programmer who supervises the equipment, but otherwise, the café is nearly empty, just us and a couple of others across the room. I shift long enough to tap out an order for hot choclaste on the wall panel. The kitchen-mate at our table handles basic requests. Anything complex or exotic would be forwarded to the gourmet unit in the kitchen, and an autoserver would bring it to us. March doesn’t like them, but I think they’re cute, little beverage carts on wheels, equipped with a primitive AI chip.

    My mother pauses to regroup, studying March with what would be a narrow-eyed stare, except that might cause wrinkles. Still, the impression remains via the intensity of her regard. He doesn’t flinch. At last she looks away, and I have the sense he’s won something without knowing what it is.

    “I understand they plan to appoint you as ambassador for New Terra,” Ramona begins.

    Talk about a subject change. We’re finally getting down to the meat of why she came looking for me, though. It wasn’t to hug me and bask in her gratitude that I’m all right. My mother doesn’t possess a scintilla of pure maternal sentiment.

    I raise a brow.