Arkwright by Allen Steele Page A

delivery.” Kate slowly nodded. “That’s what I was told, growing up. And it was all a lie.”
    Maggie shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as a plausible fabrication.”
    â€œAnd no one else knew?”
    â€œThe only two other people who knew were Harry and George, and they promised to keep it to themselves.” She raised a hand before Kate could ask the obvious question. “Because they belong to the Legion of Tomorrow, and we’ve never kept secrets from each other … well, almost never.”
    â€œSo Grandpapa adopted Mama, and Grandma raised her as her own child. And you—”
    â€œMaintained a discreet distance.” Maggie gazed out the window. “It was actually a fairly pleasant arrangement. Once I became an agent and took on Nat as my first client, I was able to watch Sylvia grow up. She always thought of me as the lady who took care of her father’s business, and I was even her babysitter a couple of times.” Her face darkened. “But Nat never really warmed to her. Because of the circumstances in which she was born, I think he had trouble accepting her as his legitimate child, and after he quit teaching to become a full-time writer, he paid more attention to his work than he did to her. That hurt their relationship even more. And when Judie told her the truth just before she passed away—”
    â€œI think I understand everything now.”
    â€œNo, you don’t.” Maggie shook her head. “Only part of it, the part where you know why Nat, Harry, and I share a bond that goes back many years and how the Legion of Tomorrow has become the basis for the Arkwright Foundation.”
    â€œ How, sure, but not why.” Despite everything Maggie had just told her, Kate found herself thinking like a reporter again. Of the “five Ws” that had been drilled into her back in journalism school— who, what, when, where, and why —she’d learned the first four; the all-important fifth one was still missing.
    â€œYou’re right. You should know this too.” The waiter came by, and Maggie motioned for him to take away the plates. “I guess it really started just a few blocks up the street, during the 1989 World Science Fiction Convention.” She paused, and a bleak smile crossed her face. “Come to think of it, that was almost exactly fifty years after Nat, Harry, George, and I first met.”

 
    13
    It should have been a good weekend for Nat. In the end, though, Maggie realized that bringing him there had been a mistake.
    The line for his autograph session began forming an hour before he actually showed up. By the time Maggie escorted him up the escalator to the promenade of the Hynes Convention Center where author signings were taking place, nearly four hundred people were waiting for him. Nathan Arkwright stared at the line snaking down the broad upstairs mezzanine, and for a moment, Maggie thought he was going to turn and beat a hasty retreat to the curb where his housekeeper, Mr. Sterling, had dropped them off just a few moments earlier.
    â€œMy god, Maggie,” he muttered. “Who are all these people here for?”
    â€œYou, my love,” she whispered, and then she took him by the arm and led him to the table.
    This was the first science fiction convention Nathan had attended in years. Indeed, if it hadn’t been in his own state, he probably wouldn’t have shown up at all. But the mass-market paperback of Through the Event Horizon had just come out, and since the book was a New York Times hardcover bestseller last year, his publisher was putting a major push behind it, and they wanted Nat to make at least a couple of public appearances to promote the book. Showing up for one day of this year’s Worldcon shouldn’t have been much of a burden, but even so, Maggie had had to practically drag Nat out of his house. He’d become a recluse since Judith’s death, and