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separated from Mahala’s by a bathroom; the three rooms on the other side of the corridor were empty. Mahala’s great-uncle Benzi and her uncle Dyami used those rooms when they visited, and new arrivals in Oberg often stayed there until they found another place to live. Barika Maitana, one of Risa’s housemates, had come there as a new settler when Mahala was still a baby and had decided to stay. Sooner or later, Barika and her bondmate Kristof Anders would have a child, and then one of the two empty rooms in Paul’s wing of the house would be filled. Her grandmother would have liked to have Dyami living here, too, but Risa’s son made his home in the Turing settlement, up in the Freyja Mountains to the north.
    The house was too empty; her grandmother often said that. The extra space was wasteful, a failing high on Risa’s list of offenses, and it also wasn’t good for Mahala to be the only child in this house.
    Mahala sat on her bed, feeling the silence of the house as Risa settled herself on a cushion in one corner.
    â€œI knew we’d have to have this talk eventually,” Risa murmured.
“I hoped it could wait until you were older, but—” She sighed. “It’s
painful for me to talk about your mother, even after all this time.”
    Mahala had been born after the deaths of both her parents; that was part of her record, a fact she had always known. Her mother and father had stored their genetic material, and the embryo that had grown into Mahala had begun to gestate before the deaths of her parents in 631, during that troubled time people here called the Cytherian Revolt, although Mahala had not entered the world until two years after the uprising. Risa, after keeping the embryo of her grandchild cryonically stored for nearly two years, had finally chosen to rear Mahala.
    As it happened, Mahala and her grandmother had started life under similar circumstances. Risa had also gestated inside an artificial womb after her own mother’s death, and her father, Liang Chen, had brought her up. Risa’s mother, Iris, held a place of honor in Venus’s history; a monument to her stood in Oberg’s main dome. The legacy of Mahala’s mother was more ambiguous.
    She would never know her parents; Mahala had accepted that. Risa had never known her mother, either. But now, for the first time, she was beginning to wonder why she knew so little about her mother and father.
    â€œYou have a right to some answers, child.” Risa brushed back a lock of her graying black hair. “What is it you want to know?” she asked, and Mahala felt her reluctance to tell.
    Mahala considered what to ask. Her mother’s name had been Chimene Liang-Haddad, and her father’s Boaz Huerta, but she had been given her grandmother’s surname of Liangharad. While still a young woman, Chimene had become the leader of the Ishtar cult, believers in a Spirit that was coming to life on this once-lifeless world, with whom all Cytherians would someday be united. Ishtar had dreamed of ruling Venus, with the help of Earth’s Council of Mukhtars, but the cult’s followers had become so repressive that many had finally turned against them during the Cytherian Revolt. Chimene had been misled by some of those close to her, but in the end she had sided with the people who had defied Earth’s Mukhtars. Sef had told Mahala all about that.
    Chimene and Boaz, she knew, had died before all the hearings were held to judge those who had committed the worst offenses against their fellow Cytherians. There had been no chance for them to defend themselves against possibly unjust accusations. But she did not know how her parents had met their deaths.
    â€œHow did my mother die?” she asked.
    Risa took a breath. “I didn’t want you to know. It’s why I put a lock on that part of her public record.”
    â€œBut everyone else must know.”
    â€œYes. My daughter