Dreamfall (19 page)

I knew more about what I was drinking. It was strong, like I’d
expected. I saw Kissindre’s eyes water; she raised her eyebrows and took
another siP.

Ezra drank, finally, and started to cough again. I emptied
my cup in one swallow; this time I did smile. My cup refilled itself. I didn’t
drink it down this time, remembering I hadn’t eaten; remembering the smell of
food and wondering again where it was, wishing it was on the table. There’d
been a time when not eating all day was just how I lived, but I hadn’t lived
like that for a while now.

The bottle and extra cups sitting in front of me on the
table disappeared. For a heartbeat the table was empty, and then a torus-shaped
bowl replaced them, with the lamp centered in its negative ,pu-.. The lamp
flame wavered, the smoke corkscrewed. I felt the gentle breath of air disturbed
by an exchange of matter and .n”rgy. Grandmother smiled, nodding at me, and
began to speak again.

I glanced at Wauno.

“Grandmother says it’s time to eat.” He pointed at the
trencher filled with something that looked like stew. “She says you go first,
because you’ve been hungry for a long time.” He gave me an odd look as he said
it, as if he wasn’t any surer of what the words meant than I was.

I looked dorvn at the table. There was no bowt in front of
me, no utensil; only what I’d taken for serving spoons waiting in the trencher.

“.We all eat out of the same bowl,” Wauno said. “It’s
custom. Go ahead.”

I reached out, dug the pronged spoon into, the dish.
Everyone watched me like I was disarming a bomb as I brought it up to my mouth.
I wondered whether Hydrans even used spoons. I ate a mouthful. The pungent mix
of flavors, spicy and sweet-sour==filled my head until my memory overflowed.

/
remember this. I remember
—A room, but not this one ...
eyes, green like the old woman’s, green like mine, but in someone else’s face
... d warm room sheltering t[e, and the warmth of my mother’s arms, her mind
whispering my name with love ... my one true name, which could only be spoken
mind-to-mind ....

I swallowed, gasping, cleared my head with a burning mouthful
of the nameless liquor. I sat blinking as the burn spread to my eyes.

My vision cleared, and I looked at Grandmother. She didn’t
move or speak; she just kept watching me with veiled eyes, with her head cocked
a little to one side.

“So how is it?” Wauno asked.

“Spicy,” I whispered. I dug another mouthful of stew out of
the trencher. This time I kept my eyes fixed on the table, not listening for
lost voices haunting the circuits of my brain. I swallowed the food and went on
eating. Wauno joined me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kissindre down her
second drink like a dose of medicine and reach for a spoon. She glanced at
Ezra, who was still sitting beside her, looking like a man with a stick up his
ass.
He didn’t like freaks.
I wondered how strong his reaction to all
the visible use of psi really was. He wasn’t making any move to try the food. I
wasn’t sure he’d taken more than a sip of the liqudr.

“What’s in this?” he asked suddenly. “I know he’ll eat anything—”
He jerked his head at me. “But most people have more sense.” He looked at
Kissindre as though he expected her to agree with him.

Instead she brought the spoonful of food to her mouth and
ate it. I watched her expression; slowly she smiled. “It’s good,” she said,
still holding his gaze.

“I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to eat something I don’t know
anything about,” he muttered.

“It’s just vegetables and spices,” Wauno said. “Some ate
traditional with the Hydrans, some they got from us. Nothing in their food ever
bothered me. They’re vegetarians,” he repeated.

Ezra grimaced. “Manioc root is a vegetable, but if you don’t
cook it right it’s a poison. Besides, this is unsanitary, everyone eating out
of the same dish.” He waved a hand at the bowl. ‘And everything here is ...
alien.” I wondered what bothered him the most—the food, the way it was laid
out, or how it had arrived on the table.

A new, smaller bowl appeared on the tabletop in front of
him. It was full of stew. He jerked back as if it was alive.

Grandmother said something, poking her finger in Ezra’s direction
while he sat glaring at the bowl, his look getting darker as he thought about
it.

“Grandmother says you shouldn’t eat with us,” Wauno said,
expressionless. “She says you’re sick.”

Ezra looked up at them, his mouth thinning.

“She says you should drink
uslo
tea. You’ll feel a
lot better.” Wauno smiled. So did Grandmother.

“Must be a laxative,” I muttered.

“That’s it,” Ezra said, pushing up from the table. “I’m not
taking any more of this. We did not come here to be made the butt of a joke by
you, Wauno, of by s—” He broke off, glancing at Grandmothe4 glafing at me.

“By a what?” I put my spoon down.

“Stop it, for God’s sake.” Kissindre stopped me with a look.
Ezra caught her arm, tried to pull her to her feet. She jerked free. “Ezra, sit
down! I’m solTy ....” She twisted where she sat, looking from Wauno to
Grandmother.

“Wauno, whether this was your idea or the freak’s, it
stinks,” Ezra said, still standing. “I want you to take us back to Rivertor,
no\ry.”

“Wait a minute,” Kissindre said, starting to get up.

“What did you call me?” I pushed to my feet beside her.

“You heard me.”

“Hey.” Wauno got up in one fluid motion, holding up his
hand. “I’ll take anybody back who wants to go. You don’t have to go with trip”—tre
looked at Kissinflle—6’if you don’t want to.”

She looked from me to Ezra, and I watched her face harden. “Yes==
I do,” she said, and the words were like stones. She looked back at
Grandmother, and murmured, “I hope ....
Namaste.
”
She made a
small boW still remembering the ritual form, even now. She started after Ezra,
who’d already left the room.

I ducked my head, still looking at Grandmother, and followed
them out. I fought my anger, trying not to let it make me stupid, trying not to
leave it hanging like a pall in the rooms behind me, where everyone would feel
it choking therr ....

When I got outside Ezra and Kissindre were shouting at each
other. His face was red in the reflected light; hers was half in darkness.

I caught Bzra by the shoulder, pulling him around. “Cut it
out,” I said. “Everyone can feel /os—”

He pulled away from me, his face full of disgust or something
uglier. “Keep your hands off me, you pervert, yes—”

“Freak?” I said.

“Freak!” he shouted, and his hands balled into fists. “You
goddamn freak!”

“At least I’m not a goddamn asshole,” I said.

He lunged at me. I saw it coming, as if he was moving in slow
motion; I could have been reading his mind, the move was so obvious. I
stiff-armed him: he ran himself up on the heel of my hand and went down like I’d
hit him with a rock.

I watched him writhe on the ground, bleeding and cursing;
watched Kissindre drop down on her knees beside him, putting her hands on him,
covering him with solicitude. “Oh, my God,” she was saying; while he held his
face, groaning, “My node, he broke my nsds—”

Wauno came up beside me. He stood there, not saying anything,
with his hands behind his back and his mouth pulled a little to one side.

Kissindre gave us a look I’d never seen her give to a
sentient life-form before. “Help me, damn you!” she said.

Wauno moved forward and helped her get Ezra on his feet. He
started them toward the transport; glanced back over his shoulder at me. “I’ll
come back for you.”

“What?” I said. “\try’4i1—”

“Grandmother wants you to stay,” he said. “She wants to talk
to you. I’ll be back.”

Shit.
I started after them. Kissindre looked back at
me== and I stopped moving. I watched them get into the transport, watched it
rise into the night, leaving me stranded.

“Now time can move forward again,” someone said behind me.

I swung around.

Grandmother.
For just a moment, I thought she’d
mindspoken me. But she hadn’t. “You speak Standard?” I blurted out the only
question that seemed to be left in my head. I remembered that Wauno had
translated her speech to us but not the other way around. I’d thought she was
reading our minds, but she hadn’t needed to.

“Of course.” She smiled the same open contented smile, but suddenly
it didn’t seem simple at all. “Now we can eat in peace.” She bent her head at
me, inviting me back inside.

I followed her back through the waffen of halls to the room
where the food was waiting. As I crossed the threshold, the scent of it
triggered more memories; for a moment I was crossing into a different room,
somewhere else in spacetime—

I stopped just inside the doorway while Grandmother went on
to the table and settled into her place. She looked up at me, expectant, with
the thread of smoke tendriling past her face. Her face was a mystery in the
shifting light. I focused on it, went toward it, kneeled down where I’d been
sitting before. She didn’t do or say anything, as if she didn’t register
anything I felt or thought.

I had the feeling that if I didn’t start eating, she wouldn’t
either. So I ate, filling the empty place in my thoughts with physical sensation,
existing in the present, the way I’d learned to do on the streets, holding off
the past and the future for as long as I could.

Grandmother ate with me, not saying anything. She didn’t use
a spoon. But she chewed and swallowed, just like I did, savoring the taste and
the texture of the food. I wondered whether the silence between us was her
choice or whether she was simply respecting mine. I wondered whether for her
this was like eating in an empty room.

I glanced away at the walls. There were no windows, not even
any pictures to relieve the blank monotony of the place. I wondered whether she
was too poor even to buy herself some cheap holostills, or whether the
austerity was intentional. Maybe Hydrans never felt claustrophobic, the way
humans did, because they knew they always had a way out.

I thought about the woman with the kidnapped child. I thought
about Freaktown, and what I’d seen of it; I tfrought about Oldcity, as the
flavors of the food and the memories worked on me. I thought about traps, how
they were everywhere, waiting for everyone—different traps that were all really
the same trap in the end. Life was a trap, and human or Hydran, you only got
out of it ong way ....

I went on eating; tried to make my restless body as still as
the old woman watching me, tried to make my thoughts as empty as the walls.

But the longer I stared at the wall across from me, the more
I began to notice the subtle tracery of cracks in its surface; how those cracks
formed patterns, images that your mind could get lost in, that led you somehow
into the silent calm of your own mind’s eye ....

I sat back finally and wiped my mouth, with one kind of hunger
satisfied, at least.

Grandmother sat back too, and stopped eating. I wondered
whether she’d stopped because I’d stopped, or whether she’d only kept eating
because I’d still been hungry. Or whether we’d really both wanted to stop at
the same time. I looked up at her. Her eyes were watching me like a cat’s.

Two Hydran children, a girl and a boy, came into the room.
They moved so silently I didn’t hear them coming, but somehow their arrival
didn’t startle me. They bowed to us as they gathered up utensils and carried
away the trencher. They didn’t say anything, but I caught them looking at me as
they went out. I heard them whispering in the hall.

I wondered why Grandmother hadn’t just sent the food away
herself, the same way she’d put it on the table. I thought about that, about
how the whole eating ritual had reeked of psi. If Grandmother had wanted to rub
our faces in the fact that she had the Gift and we didn’t, that we were on
Hydran ground now—outsiders, aliens—she couldn’t have made it any more obvious.
I wondered whether that was exactly what she’d been doing.

“You have many questions,” she said, just as I decided to
ask one.

I felt myself smile as I nodded. She could have read that
right out of my thoughts, or just from the expression on my face. “Did you
arrange this meal just to make the others leave?”

“Why do you say that?” She leaned forward, .her head cocked
a little to the side, like she was hard of hearing. It wasn’t the first time I’d
seen her do that. I realized suddenly that it wasn’t my words she had trouble
understanding.

“Just wondered,” I muttered.

Her face twitched, as if something I couldn’t see had brushed
her cheek. Finally she said, “I follow the Way of Things. If one follows the
Way, one discovers whatever one was meant to find.”

“Oh.” I settled back, hooking my arms around my knees. It
sounded like the same pseudo-mysticism too many human religions preached along
with loving their fellow sentient beings. As far as I could see, it was all
hype and more than half hypocrisy. But a belief like that might mean something
genuine to the Hydrans. They had precognition: sometimes they actually did get
a glimpse of the future.

I thought about my last sight of Kissindre and Ezra; about
what kind of scene there was going to be when I saw them again. “Does Wauno
know you speak our language?”

“He speaks our language,” she said, like that explained everything.
“Why don’t you ask me a real question?”

I laughed, and grimaced. “Why don’t you hate me?”

The calm waters of her expression rippled. She pressed her
hand to her eyes, looked up at me again. “Why should I hate you?”

I shook my head. “I can’t use my psi. Hanjen ... the Council
threw me out, when they realized—”

“You don’t use your Gift because you choose not to,” she
said.

“YOu dOn’t UnderS[gn6l—”