Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [66]
Lara took the card, curious, and slid it into the appropriate slot on her terminal. Her name came up at the top of the screen, and a prompt to enter her password. File information showed that the message was much too large for a mere text transmission, so it was bound to be voice and image. “No, that’s all right. I have no secrets.” She entered her password and brought up the mail message.
A man’s face, good-looking and somewhat roguish, surrounded by black hair cut close and a trim mustache; behind was a plain beige wall, a table with some holos on it, an open viewport showing a landscape of blasted, black ground. “Hello, Lara,” the man said. “I don’t imagine you ever thought you’d hear from me again.”
Lara frowned. Who was this man? Then she recognized his face, a face she’d only seen a couple of times in files she’d hastily memorized some time ago, and she felt her jaw drop. “It’s—it’s—Tavin Notsil. My brother.”
“I thought he was supposed to be—”
“I know you must have thought I was dead,” the recording continued. “Just as I thought you were. It seems that fate has spared us both. I’d made some unusual arrangements with the town constable and was earning an honest living on the Sea of Aldiv under an assumed name when New Oldtown was hit. I came home and everything I knew was gone. But now I find out that you’ve survived. I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
Lara felt Tyria squeeze her and heard her whisper “Congratulations.” But Lara’s mind was racing down pathways far from human contact.
She’d have to reply to this boob. Somehow break off all family contact forever, and without letting him see a holo of her—of Gara Petothel.
Then her attention fell on the holos on the table behind Tavin. They showed family scenes. The real Lara Notsil’s mother and father sharing a swing tied to a tree behind their farmhouse. A much younger Tavin Notsil swimming in the family pond. And, seated atop a repulsor thresher, her expression cheerful, Lara Notsil—
Not the real Lara Notsil. Her, Gara Petothel, in farm clothes, with fine blond hair, wearing a sunburn she’d never suffered in life. She froze the picture, looked at it, willing it and its wrongness away.
The world spun and Lara’s knees went weak. She slumped back in her chair and felt Tyria support her. Heard her murmur, “Whoa, there. Obviously this is a big shock for you. I’ll get Dr. Phanan.”
Lara clung to Tyria’s hand, not letting her leave. “No doctor. I’m all right.” Her words were faint in her own ears, but she knew she didn’t want anyone else seeing her. Not until she had this sorted out.
She’d never been on the world of Aldivy. She’d never been seated on that thresher. Before a few weeks ago, she’d never been Lara Notsil. Or was that a lie? Was she really Lara, and her memories of Gara Petothel some bizarre dream? The walls still seemed to spin as she tried to force her way through the sense of unreality that possessed her. She unfroze the message.
Her brother was now looking at a datapad. “Listen, you’ll probably find this ironic. Do you remember putting in for a transfer to move to Greenton and transmitting an application to Lachany Foods there? I have your original letter here. ‘If I can effect this transfer, would you be interested in employing a technician with my skills and special knowledge? It is my hope that you would.’ ”
Lara shut her eyes and resisted the temptation to cover her ears against the barrage of confusing half memories. She knew those words. She’d written those words. And if those were Lara Notsil’s words, then she was Lara, not Gara.
“Well, Lachany Foods wrote back. They apparently didn’t cross-index the destruction of New Oldtown with the season’s applications before they did that—in other