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By Root 681 0

pure white lamb's-wool. The ritual's purpose was to cleanse the supplicant of the taint of sin following a line-of-duty killing. The custom had been discontinued at least fifty years before Roz had joined the service. Instead, every seventh day of duty an adjudicator got sprinkled with holy water, usually during the morning briefing. It made sense to Roz; if she'd had to do that every time someone got killed she'd have spent half her life washing the blood off. They'd have had to organize a shift system. Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion that the lamb's-wool must have itched horribly.

Roz waded in up to her thighs and ducked under the water. Coming up fast again she shook the water from her hair. Felt the hot sun quickly drying her skin. Caught sight of her reflection. A second Roslyn Forrester, rippling and foreshortened across the surface of the water. She stretched her arms out and looked at them. She realized it was a long time since she'd really looked at herself. How fragile her fingers were, long and delicate. Pity that the nails were ragged and bitten down to the quick. The skin below the wrists was pale, a long time since they'd seen the sun. A dark line of scar tissue cut diagonally across her left forearm: vibroknife wound. She touched herself on the shoulder, feeling along her collarbone until she came to the tiny ridge that marked where the fracture had been reset. She traced the outline of her breasts, too small for her mother's liking, and down to her belly. Feeling the ridges of the muscle under her fingertips, the barely perceptible line where some nameless BEM had made a spirited attempt to disembowel her.

Been in the wars, Mama. Got the scars to prove it.

Scrawny, she thought, feeling over the sharp points of her pelvis. Mama always said I was too scrawny. Holding me up to some idealized reflection of the perfect Xhosa maiden. A figure made up entirely of curves that walked gracefully across a veldt long gone to the Undertown and urban decay. It really pained you that I didn't fit. This ugly, scrawny kid with her too long legs and frizzy hair. It must have hurt you to know that I'd come out of your womb, hurt almost as much as that premature birth out in the badlands. Out where the medical facilities were basic and rescue twenty minutes too late.

I ruined you coming into the world and you never forgave me for that. Ruined you beyond the skill of any reconstructive surgery. You with your stupid obsession with the past, your sunshine emulator and your twice yearly trip to the bepple clinic to get your skin darkened. You'd have beppled me from-birth, twisted my DNA to suit your own aesthetic if Grandma and Father hadn't stopped you. You looked at me and you saw something different, but when I looked in the mirror I saw only myself. And you wondered why I ran away to look for the truth.

Truth, justice and the Terranian way of life.

You must be laughing at me now, now that the truth has found me out.

And the dumbest thing of all is that I wanted that heritage too. Wanted the ochre-coloured cloaks that hung on the walls, the ancient strings of multicoloured beads, the cow-hair necklace to ward off evil spirits. I dreamed of being a worthy daughter of the Xhosa, the Angry Man. I found things, Mama, that you never dreamed of, the stories of Nomgqause, Mandela and Mbete. People who fought for the things I thought I was fighting for.

I had to go forward, Mama; if I'd looked back I'd have seen the chain of small compromises and moral lapses that was dragging me down with its weight. Had to keep thinking that I was making some kind of difference, however small. That where I passed things were, if not better, then at least not as bad as they were before.

I should have just stayed with you on Io, Mama. Inherited the Baroncy. Then I could have held a big reception on my ascension, invited all your aristo friends, the Pontiff Seculares, the heads of the big corporations and the entire upper tier of the Overcity. They'd have come to pay their respects to the new Baroness Io. I could have poisoned the lot of