Dreamfall (15 page)

I felt a hand on my arm, and someone behind me said, “He
didn’t mean that. He’s just shaken up. He shouldn’t have insisted on using the
equipment. He doesn’t have enough experience, and he almost killed himself—”
Ezra.

I turned around, breaking his grip. “The damn equipment
failed! It wasn’t me.”

“Grow up,” he hissed. “Everything you’ve done since we got
here has been the wrong thing. Thke responsibility for your actions, for once.”

“Ezra.” Kissindre’s voice cut between us. “You ate not in
charge of this team.” She pushed in close to his face, lowering her voice, “It’s
not your responsibility, or your right, to reprip4n6f—”

“Well, if you won’t do it, someone has to,” he snapped.

Her face went red.

“Why do you always take his side?” Ezra gestured at me
before she could open her mouth and answer him. ‘Are you going to let him ruin
everything we have here—.. t” He waved his hand to include everything around
us, but something in his face said that what he meant was only the distance
between him and her.

“Ezra,” she said. Her face softened. “You don’t understand.”

“I think I do.” He turned and walked away, as if everyone
around him—all the other team members, the techs and vips and inspectors
watching us like voyeurs—had disappeared.

I turned back from watching him go, to see whether the Feds
were making any move to talk with the bondies. They weren’t. “Why don’t you ask
the workers who use this equipment all the time how safe it is? And how much
choice they have about using rt?”

“They’re contract laborers,” Protz said sharply. “They don’t
understand the technology, and they don’t know anything about Tau’s safety
procedures. We protect them in ways they don’t even tealize.”

“Do they have the right to refuse to use those suits?” I
asked. “What happens if they won’t?”

No one answered me.

“They haven’t got any rights.” I turned back to the two
Feds. “The FTA runs Contract Labor. It’s your job to protect the6—i1’g your job
to make sure Tau isn’t killing them. Do your job—”

“Cat.” Kissindre cut me off before the Feds could give me
whatever answer they thought I had coming. “Don’t get political,” she said, and
the casual tone didn’t match the look in her eyes. “It’s not what we’re here
for.”

I looked at her; looked away again. “It’s what you’re here
for!” I shouted past her.

The man, Givechy, nodded finally, grudgingly. “We’ll check
it out,” he said, glancing at the woman, who nodded.

“Our workers are not being mistreated,” Protz said
impatiently.

“Your slaves,” I muttered.

“They are not slaves!” Kissindre said, and her anger
startled me. “Contract Labor builds worlds. It’s giving those men a chanss—”

“What the hell do you know about rt?” I said.

“My grandfather was a contract laborer.”

I looked back at her, caught naked by surprise.

“It gave him his start. He went on to make a good life for
himself and his family.”

I looked down at my wrist, at my databand. “Yeah,” I whispered.
“Well, all it got me was scars.”

Her mouth opened, closed again. A muscle twitched in her
cheek.

“We’re making several of our research and production
facilities available for your inspection,” Protz said. For a moment I thought
he was talking to me. He was talking to the Feds. But then he met my stare, and
added, “You’re welcome to accompany us, if that will prove to you that we’re
not some sort of monsters.” There was more indignation than smugness in it, as
if he was so blindly keiretsu that he couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone
would question how they did their business or ran their citizens’ lives.

“I’ve had a real shitty duy,” I said. “I don’t need this.” I
started to turn away.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “It’s tomorro’w.”

I kept walking, head down, letting the beach disappear under
my feet until I was beyond the human circle. The reefs rose up ahead of me; I
walked toward them, remembering the feel of moving toward them in the suit ...
passing inside ... the merging ....

And I wasn’t afraid. It surprised me to realize that
Something filled me that was almost disbelief ...
almost longing.
It
didn’t seem to mean anything that what I’d done had almost killed me. It only
mattered that I’d experienced the rapture, become part of something
indescribable, and yet so familiar ....
Like a joining:
the deepest,
most intimate form of communion between psions; a thing that was almost
impossible if the psions were human. But somehow the reefs had triggered my
psi, made me respond ... made me whole.

I was standing at the reef-face again, like I had before;
but this time there was no suit performing the technomagic that let me walk
through walls. I put out my hands, pressed them against the mossy, fibrous
growth that defined the interface where the reef met the outside air, feeling
it crumble, soft and yielding, even as the surface resisted me, turning me
back. I pressed harder, putting my weight against it until my hands sank into
the loamy surface. I stood that way, strainiflg, listening ...

“You really want to get back inside that much?” a voice
asked, behind me.

I jerked around, startled.

Luc Wauno stood behind me, his head bent, his gaze moving
from my face to the reef-face to my hands, no longer sunk wrist-deep in its
surface.

I pinned my hands against my sides with the pressure of my arms;
beginning to realize that I was getting numb with cold, standing there like I’d
been hypnotized in my clammy, stinking shirtsleeves.

“I thought you left,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’ve got my orders too.”

I looked at him, and away.

“The Hydrans call these holy places.” He glanced up the
steep, shadowed rise of the slope, his fingers touching the pouch that hung
against his chest.

“I know,” I said.

He looked down again. “They say it’s a kind of ecstasy they
feel, a kind of revelation about the visions of the cloud-whales. There’s a
kind of mental residus—”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He half frowned, with what looked like curiosity. “I
thought you couldn’t use your psi.”

I remembered the conversation I’d had with Sand and
Per-rymeade that he’d overheard. “I can’t control it. But I felt something, in
thers—”

“The tech said it was anoxia. Reef-rapture. It happens if a
suit fails. You know your lips were blue when you came out of there?”

“I wasn’t hallucinating.”

He shrugged and didn’t say anything else. I figured he didn’t
believe me.

“Ho\M often do the suits fail?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Not my department. I
cloud-watch. That’s all.”

“Right,” I said. “You just follow orders.” I started to walk
away.

“Hey,” he called.

I stopped, looking back at him. But he only shrugged, as if
he didn’t really have anything to say.

I turned away again and kept moving, putting the carnp
behind

DKEAMF’ALL / I05

me, until I reached the river’s shore. I stood on the
stones, watching the river ruIl. And I remenrbered another shore, on another
world, remembered feeling the same sense of inexplicable loss as I watched the
river disappear into time and the hidden distance.

Tun next day began like the one before should have. We’d
been herded back to Riverton to spend the night, as if Tau was afraid to leave
us unattended in the Homeland. But at sunrise Wauno was waiting to take us out
again. This time Ezra stayed behind, accessing Tau’s databanks from the roorn
he and Kissindre shared. That made everything easier, at least for me.
Kissindre didn’t say much, except to ask Wauno a few questions about the reef
site. I couldn’t tell whether she was brooding, worried about her family
probleffis, or just exhausted. I was tired enough, but knowing that her family’s
troubles, and Tau’s, weren’t my problem anymore made me feel better than I had
since I’d come to Refuge.

The team spent its time at the research site doing
experimental runs on the equipment, learning to interpret the data Tau technicians
pulled out of the reefs and what the limits of their readings were. We only did
external soundings. No one asked to go reef-diving after what had nearly
happened to me; Kissindre had agreed to let the Tau workers handle it.

As we were eating our midday meal, Wauno’s transport landed
again on the shore. He wasn’t due back until evening. Everyone looked up,
looking surprised and then concerned. And then, one by one, they looked at me.

6’\tr/[4f—?” I said, frowning.

“Nothing,” Chang muttered, and they looked away again at the
transport.

It wasn’t Peffymeade or Sand getting out of the transport
this time. It was only Protz. For a minute I thought everything might actually
be all right.

He stopped in front of us where we all sat in stasis with
food still halfway to our mouths. “I’m soffy to intrude.” He nodded to
Kissindre, but his glance stayed on her about as long as a fly. “Cat?” He
looked at me aga\n, and Chang groaned under his breath.

“What?” I said again, making the last time I’d said it sound
friendly.

Protz bent his head at the transport behind him. “Yesterday
I told you that Tau was opening one of its mining and research facilities for
the FTA’s inspection. I thought you might want to see for yourself that our
contract laborers work under completely safe conditions.”

I hesitated, glancing at Kissindre. She didn’t look happy.
Slowly I got to my feet. “I need this,” I murmured. “I’ll get caught up. This
is the last time—”

She grimaced and nodded. Then she looked down, so that I
couldn’t see her expression. I glanced at the rest of the team, a dozen faces
wearing a dozen different expressions. No understanding showed on any of them.

I thought about apologizing; didn’t. I tried not to listen
to the sound of their voices talking behind my back as I walked away.

As I got on board the transport Protz was already explaining
what we were going out to see: an actual interface, where they mined the reef
matrix and processed the anomalies they discovered there. I tried to listen to
what he was saying, tried not to feel as guilty taking my seat in the transport
as I had turning my back on the team.

Wauno was at the controls, as usual. He looked about as glad
to be there as I probably did. He raised his eyebrows as he saw me come aboard.
I wondered what he meant by that.

I sat down beside Osuna and Givechy, the two Feds, trying to
remember which of them was which as I engaged my safety restraints. The only
obvious difference between them was their sex. Maybe they had personalities,
but so far I hadn’t seen any proof of that.

They were wearing duty uniforms today: heavy, pragmatic
boots, gray pants, bright orange jackets with one gray sleeve and one gold. At
least the uniforms, with the FTA’s winged Earth logo on the breast, guaranteed
they’d never be mistaken for combine lackeys. I stole glances at their datapatches
until I was certain Osuna was the woman and Givechy was the man. Osuna would
have been good-looking if she ever smiled. They stared back at me as if they
had no idea what I was doing on board.

I nodded.

“I don’t understand,” Osuna said, sounding hostile. “I
thought you were a technician or a student. Why are you here?” I remembered
yesterduy; probably she did too.

I glanced at Protz, who seemed to be obsessed with the view
out the window beside him. I looked back and shrugged. “The same reason you
are.”

“This isn’t your job. Your job is back there.” Givechy
gestured at the reef disappearing behind us.

“Then I guess it’s person&1,” I said.

“He’s a former contract laborer,” Protz muttered to the
wall.

The two Feds looked at me with the kind of disbelief
normally saved for somebody who’d had major cosmetic surgery—like adding a
second head.

“We11, then,” Givechy munnured. “You must be an outstanding
example of how well the Contract Labor system works. Where were you assigned?”

“The Federation Mines, or Cinder.” I let the words register:
the Federation was their boss. “If someone hadn’t paid off my contract, I’d be
dead of radiation poisoning now.”

“That’s not amusing,” Osuna snapped. Protz looked at us, finally.

“I know,” I said.

Both Feds looked at Protz, as if they wondered whether I was
Tau’s way of paying them back for being here.

The look on Protz’s face was oil and water, unease and
barely disguised pleasure all at once. It was the most complex emotion I’d seen
him register since we’d met. It didn’t last long. He realranged his face until
it was as smooth as the surface of his brain.

“I hope you don’t think your experience somehow qualifies
you to do our job or to interfere with 1t,” Givechy said to me finally.

“I’m not here to get in your wa],” I said. “But I’ll be watching.”

The seatback ahead of me came alive as Protz displayed an information
program on the transport’s interactive consoles. The two Feds put on headsets.
They lost themselves in the virtual feed like they actually thought they’d learn
something meaningful about what we were going to see.

I watched the program on flatscreen with half my attention,
wondering whether the Feds were really as interested in this hype as they
seemed to be or whether they were just avoiding further conversation. And I
wondered what qualified the two of them to pass judgment on Tau and half a
hundred other combines all across the Federation’s piece of the galaxy, each
one with different economic concerns and technological bases, each one trying
to cover up its particular lies.

I watched my own feed long enough to catch a repeat of the
cloud-whale visuals I’d seen in my hotel room a few nights ago. After that it
bled into pure hype. I tuned out. Below us the distance between sky and ground
had filled with clouds without my noticing it. I wondered whether they were
really clouds or something more. I wanted to ask Wauno about it, about how he
knew what the differences were when he watched the cloud-whales. But I didn’t.