She flinches at his closeness, but doesn't relinquish her hold on the boy. «Torreya,» she says.
«Sorry if we scared you, Torreya, we didn't mean to. Are your parents around?»
She shakes her head slowly. «No. There's just me and Jante left now.»
Laurus inclines his head at the boy. «Your brother?»
«Yes.»
«What's the matter with him?»
«His daddy said he was ill. More ill than his daddy could cure, but he was going to learn how. Then after he cured Jante and himself we could all leave here.»
Laurus looks at the blind crippled boy again. There's no telling what has ruined his legs. Longthorpe is riddled with toxicants, a whole stratum of eternity drums lying below the crumbling topsoil to provide a stable foundation for the large industrial buildings which were supposed to rejuvenate the area's economy. Laurus remembers the Council-backed development project from nearly eighty years ago. But eternity has turned out to be less than fifty years. The factories were never built. So Longthorpe remains too poor to have any clout in the Council chamber and thus insist on clean-up programmes.
Jante points upwards. «Is that your bird?» he asks in a high, curious voice.
Ryker is perched on the edge of the grubby skylight, his huge menacing head peering down.
«Yes,» Laurus says. His eyes narrow with suspicion. «How did you know he was there?»
«His daddy gave us an affinity bond,» Torreya says. «I see for him. I don't mind. Jante was so lonely inside his head. And it was only supposed to be until his daddy understood how to cure him.»
«So where is your father now?» Laurus asks.
Her eyes drop. «I think he's dead. He was very sick. Sort of inside, you know? He used to cough up blood a lot. Then it started to get worse, and one morning he was gone. So we didn't see, I suppose.»
«How was your father going to learn how to cure Jante?»
«With the candy buds, of course.» She turns and gestures into the darker half of the room.
The machine is a customized life-support module. A graft of hardware and bitek; metal, plastic, and organic components fused in such an uncompromising fashion that Laurus can't help but feel its perversity is somehow intended to dismay. The globose-ribbed plant growing out of the centre has the appearance of a glochidless cactus, over a metre high, as hard and dark as teak.
At the centre, its meristem areola is a gooey gelatin patch from which the tiny candy buds emerge, growing along the rib vertices. They look like glaucous pebble cacti, a couple of centimetres in diameter, dappled by mauve rings.
One of Laurus's biotechnicians examined the candy bud obtained from the Thaneri officer before he ate it. The man said its cells were saturated with neurophysin proteins, intracellular carriers, but of an unknown type. Whatever they were, they would interact directly with a brain's synaptic clefts. That, he surmised, was how the memory was imparted. As to how the neurophysins were produced and formatted to provide a coherent sensorium sequence, he had no idea.
Laurus can only stare at the bizarre living machine as the forest journey memory returns to him with a vengeance.
«Are these the candy buds you've been selling?» he asks. «The ones with the forest in them?»
Torreya sniffs uncertainly, then nods.
Something like frost is creeping along Laurus's spine. There is only the one machine. «And the candy buds with the prehistoric animals as well?»
«Yes.»
«Where did this device come from?» Although he's sure he knows.
«Jante's father grew it,» Torreya replies. «He was a plant geneticist, he said he used to develop algae that could eat rocks to refine chemicals out of it. But the company shut down the lab after an accident; and he didn't have the money to get Jante and himself fixed in hospital. So he said he was going to put medical information into the candy buds and become his own doctor.»
«And the fantasy lands?» Laurus asks. «Where did they come from?»
Torreya flicks a guilty glance at Jante. And Laurus begins to understand.
«Jante, tell me where the fantasy lands come from, there's a good boy,» he says. He's smiling at Torreya, a smile that is polite and humourless.
«I do them,» Jante blurts, and there's a trace of panic in his high voice. «I've got an affinity bond with the machine's bioware processors. Daddy gave it me. He said someone ought to fill up the candy buds with something, they shouldn't be wasted. So Torry reads books for us, and I think about the places in them.»
Laurus is getting way out of his depth. His own biotechnology degree is ninety years out of date. And an affinity bond with a plant is outside anything he's ever heard of before. «You can put anything you want into these candy buds?» he asks hoarsely.
«Yes.»
«And all you do is sell them down at the harbour?»
«Yes. If I sell enough I want to buy Jante new eyes and legs. I don't know how many that will take, though. Lots, I suppose.»
Laurus is virtually trembling, thinking what would have happened if he hadn't found the children and their machine first. It must incorporate some kind of neurophysin synthesis mechanism, one that was programmable. Again, like nothing he's heard of.
The market potential is utterly staggering.
He meets Torreya's large green eyes again. She's curiously passive, almost subdued, waiting for him to say what is going to happen next. Children, he realizes, can intuitively cut to the heart of any situation.
He rests his hand on her shoulder, hoping he's doing it in a reassuringly paternal fashion. «This is very unpleasant, this room. Do you enjoy living here?»
Torreya's lips are pursed as she considers the question. «No. But nobody bothers us here.»
«How would you like to come and live with me? No one will bother you there, either. I promise that.»
Laurus's mansion sits astride a headland in the mountains behind Kariwak, its broad stone façade looking down on the city and the ocean beyond. He bought it for the view, all of his domain a living picture.
Torreya presses her face to the Rolls-Royce's window as they ride up the hill. She is captivated by the formal splendour of the grounds. Jante is sitting beside her, clapping his hands delightedly as she gives him a visual tour of the lawns and statues and winding gravel paths and ponds and fountains.
The gates of the estate's inner defence zone close behind the bronze car, and it trundles into the courtyard. Peacocks spread their majestic tails in welcome. Servants hurry down the wide stone steps from the front door. Jante is eased gently from the car and carried inside. Torreya stands on the granite cobblestones, turning around and around, her mouth open in astonishment.
«Did you really mean it?» she gasps. «Can we really live here?»
«Yes.» Laurus grins broadly. «I meant it. This is your home now.»
Camassia and Abelia emerge from the mansion to welcome him back. Camassia is twenty years old, a tall Oriental beauty with long black hair and an air of aristocratic refinement. She used to be with Kochia, a merchant in Palmetto, who has the lucrative franchise from Laurus to sell affinity bonded dogs to offworlders who want them for police-style work on stage one colony planets. Then Laurus decided he would like to see her stretched naked across his bed, her cool poise broken by the animal heat of rutting. Kochia immediately made a gift of her, sweating and smiling as she was presented.
Such whims help to keep Laurus's reputation intact. By acquiescing, Kochia sets an example of obedience to others. Had he refused, Laurus would have made an example of him.
Abelia is younger, sixteen or seventeen, shoulder-length blonde hair arranged in tiny curls, her body trim and compact, excitingly dainty. Laurus took her from her parents a couple of years ago as payment for protection and gambling debts.