Nemesis by Isaac Asimov Page B

know. I can’t tell how he would have been if he had stayed.”
    “But I can tell.” Insigna felt as though she were burning again. Her mind went back to that last conversation and her last wild shout telling Fisher to go, that he
must
go. No, it had been no mistake. She wouldn’t have wanted him as a prisoner, an enforced member of Rotor. She hadn’t loved him
that
much. For that matter, she hadn’t hated him that much either.
    And then she changed the subject quickly, allowing no time for her expression to give her away. “You upset Aurinel this afternoon. Why did you tell him Earth would be destroyed? He came to me about that and was very concerned.”
    “All you had to do was to tell him that I was just a kid and no one listens to what a kid says. He would have believed that right away.”
    Insigna ignored that. Maybe it was a good idea to say nothing in order to avoid the truth. “Do you really think Earth will be destroyed?”
    “I do. You talk about Earth sometimes. You say, ‘Poor Earth.’ You almost always say, ‘Poor Earth.’ ”
    Insigna felt herself flush. Did she really speak of Earth in those terms? She said, “Well, why not? It’s overcrowded, worn-out, full of hatred and famines and miseries. I’m sorry for the world. Poor Earth.”
    “No, Mother. You don’t say it that way. When you say it—” Marlene held up her hand in a groping gesture, feeling for something, her fingertips just missing it.
    “Well, Marlene?”
    “It’s clear in my mind, but I don’t know how to put it in words.”
    “Keep on trying. I must know.”
    “The way you say it, I can’t help but think you feel guilty—as though it were your fault.”
    “Why? What do you think I’ve done?”
    “I heard you say it once when you were in the view room. You looked at Nemesis, and it seemed to me, then, that Nemesis was mixed up in it. So I asked the computerwhat Nemesis meant and it told me. It’s something that relentlessly destroys, something that inflicts retribution.”
    “That wasn’t the reason for the name,” cried Insigna.
    “You named it,” said Marlene quietly, inexorably.
    That was no secret, of course, any longer, once they had left the Solar System behind them. Insigna had then taken the credit for the discovery and for the name.
    “It’s because I named it that I know that that wasn’t the reason for the name.”
    “Then why do you feel guilty, Mother?”
    (Silence—if you don’t want to tell the truth.)
    Insigna said at last, “How do you think Earth will be destroyed?”
    “I don’t know, but I think
you
know, Mother.”
    “We’re speaking at cross-purposes, Marlene, and let’s let it go for now. What I want, though, is to make sure you understand that you are not to talk about any of this to anyone—not about your father, and not about this nonsense of Earth’s destruction.”
    “If you don’t want me to, of course I won’t, but the destruction bit is not nonsense.”
    “I say it is. We’ll define it as nonsense.”
    Marlene nodded. “I think I’ll go view for a while,” she said with seeming indifference. “Then I’ll go to bed.”
    “Good!” Insigna watched her daughter leave.
    Guilty, thought Insigna. I feel guilty. I wear it on my face like a bright banner. Anyone who looks can see it.
    No, not anyone. Just Marlene. She has the gift of doing so.
    Marlene had to have something to compensate for all she didn’t get. Intelligence wasn’t enough. It didn’t make up sufficiently, so she had this gift of reading expression, intonation, and otherwise invisible bodily twitches, so that no secret was safe from her.
    How long had she kept this dangerous attribute to herself? How long had she known about it? Was it something that grew stronger with age? Why did she allow it to emerge now, to peep out from behind the curtain she seemed to have drawn over it, and to use it as something with which to beat her mother?
    Was it because Aurinel had rejected her, finally