Echea

Our door was shut and locked, something that we only did when we were amorous. He must have had House do it, so no one would walk in on us.

He stroked my hair, wiped the tears from my face. "You should leave your link on at night," he said tenderly. "I could have manipulated the dream, made it into something pleasant."

We used to do that for each other when we were first married. It had been a way to mesh our different sexual needs, a way to discover each other’s thoughts and desires.

We hadn’t done it in a long, long time.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" he asked.

So I did.

He buried his face in my hair. It had been a long time since he had done that, too, since he had shown that kind of vulnerability with me.

"It’s Echea," he said.

"I know," I said. That much was obvious. I had been thinking about her so much that she had worked her way into my dreams.

"No," he said. "It’s nothing to be calm about." He sat up, kept his hand on me, and peered into my face. "First Susan, then you. It’s like she’s a poison that’s infecting my family."

The moment of closeness shattered. I didn’t pull away from him, but it took great control not to. "She’s our child."

"No," he said. "She’s someone else’s child, and she’s disrupting our household."

"Babies disrupt households. It took a while, but you accepted that."

"And if Echea had come to us as a baby, I would have accepted her. But she didn’t. She has problems that we did not expect."

"The documents we signed said that we must treat those problems as our own."

His grip on my shoulder grew tighter. He probably didn’t realize he was doing it. "They also said that the child had been inspected and was guaranteed illness free."

"You think some kind of illness is causing these dreams? That they’re being passed from Echea to us like a virus?"

"Aren’t they?" he asked. "Susan dreamed of a man who died. Someone whom she didn’t want to go. Then ‘they’ pulled her away from him. You dream of your father’s death-"

"They’re different," I said. "Susan dreamed of a man’s face exploding, and being captured. I dreamed of a man being shot, and of ru

"But those are just details."

"Dream details," I said. "We’ve all been talking to Echea. I’m sure that some of her memories have woven their way into our dreams, just as our daily experiences do, or the vids we’ve seen. It’s not that unusual."

"There were no night terrors in this household until she came," he said.

"And no one had gone through any trauma until she arrived, either." I pulled away from him now. "What we’ve gone through is small compared to her. Your parents’ deaths, mine, the birth of the girls, a few bad investments, these things are all minor. We still live in the house you were born in. We swim in the lake of our childhood. We have grown wealthier. We have wonderful daughters. That’s why we took Echea."

"To learn trauma?"

"No," I said. "Because we could take her, and so many others can’t."

He ran a hand through his thi

I sighed. "If we do that, we’ll still have trauma. The government will sue. We’ll have legal bills up to our eyeballs. We did sign documents covering these things."

"They said if the child was defective, we could send her back."

I shook my head. "And we signed even more documents that said she was fine. We waived that right."

He bowed his head. Small strands of gray circled his crown. I had never noticed them before.

"I don’t want her here," he said.

I put a hand on his. He had felt that way about Kally, early on. He had hated the way an infant disrupted our routine. He had hated the midnight feedings, had tried to get me to hire a wet nurse, and then a na

And yet the pregnancies had been his idea, just like Echea had been. He would get enthusiastic, and then when reality settled in, he would forget the initial impulse.

In the old days we had compromised. No wet nurse, but a na

"You haven’t spent any time with her," I said. "Get to know her. See what she’s really like. She’s a delightful child. You’ll see."

He shook his head. "I don’t want nightmares," he said, but I heard capitulation in his voice.

"I’ll leave my interface on at night," I said. "We can even link when we sleep and manipulate each other’s dreams."

He raised his head, smiling, suddenly looking boyish, like the man who proposed to me, all those years ago. "Like old times," he said.

I smiled back, irritation gone. "Just like old times," I said.

The na

Echea had been silent during the entire trip. The shuttle had terrified her, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. Each time she had traveled by shuttle, she had gone to a new home. I reassured her that would not happen this time, but I could tell she thought I lied.

When she saw the building, she grabbed my hand.

"I’ll be good," she whispered.

"You’ve been fine so far," I said, wishing my husband could see her now. For all his demonizing, he failed to realize she was just a little girl.

"Don’t leave me here."

"I don’t plan to," I said.

The lift was a small glass enclosure with voice controls. When I spoke the code, it rose on air jets to the fifth floor and docked, just like a shuttle. It was designed to work no matter what the weather, no matter what the conditions on the ground.

Echea was not amused. Her grip on my hand grew so tight that it cut off the circulation to my fingers.

We docked at the main entrance. The building’s door was open, apparently on the theory that anyone who knew the code was invited. A secretary sat behind an antique wood desk that was dark and polished until it shone. He had a blotter in the center of the desk, a pen and inkwell beside it, and a single sheet of paper on top. I suspected that he did most of his work through his link, but the illusion worked. It made me feel as if I had slipped into a place wealthy enough to use paper, wealthy enough to waste wood on a desk.

"We’re here to see Dr. Caro," I said as Echea and I entered.

"The end of the hall to your right," the secretary said, even though the directions were u

Echea hadn’t, though. She moved through the building as if it were a wonder, never letting go of my hand. She seemed to remain convinced that I would leave her there, but her fear did not diminish her curiosity. Everything was strange. I suppose it had to be, compared to the Moon where space-with oxygen-was always at a premium. To waste so much area on an entrance wouldn’t merely be a luxury there. It would be criminal.

We walked across the wood floors past several closed doors until we reached Ronald’s offices. The secretary had warned someone because the doors swung open. Usually I had to use the small bell to the side, another old-fashioned affectation.