Dreamfall (23 page)

I shrugged off her touch, frowning. Fumbling my gloves out
of my pocket, I pushed them on. “You don’t know me.”

“I felt it when you touched me—”

I grunted, not remembering anything but the pain and
surprise as our bodies collided.

“
—tts1e
.” She touched her head.

Just for a second my breath caught. “Nice try,” I muttered,
and touched my own head. “But this doesn’t work.”

She made the same odd listening gesture I’d seen Grandmother
make:
Trying to figure me ouf.
She might sound perfectly human, but she
wasn’t.

“You’re not reading my mind now,” I said, disgusted. You couldn’t
then. Lie to me if you want to, but not about that.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, forcing me to look up again. “In
the first moment, there
was
nothing—not even a Human mind. You terrified
me. And then you looked at me, and Joby, and you opened to us .... You wanted
to help us. It was why you were there. You were the WaY.”

The Way.
I thought about Grandmother, thought about
fate and predestination. Even Hydrans couldn’t see the future clearly.
Pre-cognition was the wild card power; it could give you an edge, but that was
all. Humans followed their hunches; so did Hydrans. But those with the Gift had
a lot more reason to. Sometimes it was enough ... sometimes it was too much. I
remembered a friend, the look on his face as he’d foreseen his own death. And I
wondered again what I’d been doing on that Freaktown street, at just the wrong
moment ... or just the right one.

“.Why didn’t you teleport to get away?” Finally I was able
to

DKEAMF,ALL I 155

ask the question that had been gnawing at me ever since that
night.

“I didn’t have time.”

“Time—.1” I said. “It doesn’t take that much.”

“No== not for myself. But for Joby.” She shook her head. “If
you know who I am, then you must know what’s wrong with him.”

“Neurological damage,” I said. And then I understood.

“You believe me.” It wasn’t a question.

I glanced at her again. “But you’re not reading my mind now.”

“No.” She shook her head, without anything in her eyes, not
doubt, not pity. “You’re not letting me.” She didn’t ask what was wrong with
me. I wondered why not. From the way she’d been staring at me, I didn’t think
the reason was indifference.

“where is Joby?” I muttered, glancing away.

“Safe.” She half frowned, as if she thought I’d changed the
subject because I didn’t trust her, but it was myself that I suddenly didn’t
trust. “I love Joby more than you can imagine,” she said, as if she had every
right to expect I’d believe that. “I’d never do anything to hurt him, or put
him in danger.”

“I know ....” I whispered, telling myself that she couldn’t
know the real reason for my change of subject; any more than I knew why I’d
wanted to trust her with my life the moment I’d laid eyes on her. “So why did
you kidnap him?” I asked hoarsely, looking back at her again. I knew she’d told
me the truth about not reading my mind; she couldn’t influence how I felt
without my knowing it-.

She took a deep breath, &s if this time she’d been ready
for lhe question. “How much do you know about all this?”

“I know his parents are sick with wony. That they can’t understand
why you did it.”

“You’ve talked to them?”

I nodded. “Tau made certain I met them. I guess they felt
being arrested, drugged, and beaten up wasn’t enough to teach me a lesson. I
had to eat some shit too.”

She glanced down. When she looked up again, she looked uncertain
for the first time. She took another breath, let it out slowly, in a whisper of
fog. “I can take you to Joby, if you trust me. Then you can tell Ling and
Burnell that he’s safe.”

I sat up straight with disbelief. “where is he?”

She pointed over her shoulder. ‘Across the river.”

I followed her gesture with my eyes. “The bridge is closed.”

“We don’t need a bridge,” She said. “If you trust me,” I
almost laughed.
Why should I?
I looked into her eyes.
Wlry do I ... z
The question died on my lips.
why should you?
I didn’t ask that one
either, even though street logic screamed that this was a trap. I thought about
everything I’d gone through these past two days. And then I said, ‘A11 right.”

She took hold of my hand. My grip loosened as I almost lost
my nerve. But her hold on me didn’t falter. Her eyes weren’t registering me
now. I felt something indescribable charging the synapses of my brain, firing
every nerve down through my body, as she manipulated the quantum field in a way
I’d never be able to. I felt my body transforming, and inside the space of a
breath, reality swallowed itself—

I was sitting on a bench, but the bench and everything else
had changed.

I was in a room, in dim lamplight. It couldn’t be anywhere
but Freaktown: the shadows and the forms, the smells in the ait, the background
noises, overloaded my senses with d6ja vu until it felt like we’d traveled
through time, not space. Miya was sitting beside me on the bench, breathing
hard. She got to her feet as awkwardly as if she’d carried me here on her back,
looking toward the far side of the room.

There were two other Hydrans in the room: two men== sitting
cross-legged on the floor. One of the bat-things flitted between them, dodging
a fist-sized bubble that seemed to have a life of its own. The gf.u-ing bubble
whacked the bat-thing and knocked it to the floor, and I realized the bubble
was solid. The bat-thing floundered on the threadbare rug== trying to right
itself; its skree-ing cries hurt mY ears.

In an eyeblink Miya was across the room, kneeling down, taking
the stunned bat-thing gently in her hands. There was nothing gentle in her face
as she looked up at the two ballplayers.

The bubble, still suspended between the two Hydrans, dropped
to the floor forgotten. The ball rolled toward file, bumped to a stop against
my foot. The two men were staring at us. They stood up, and one of them
gestured at me with a guttural noise of anger.

An invisible hand forced the momentum of his turn, carrying him
on around and slamming him into the wall. Before the other Hydran could take
three steps, he tripped over his feet and fell flat.

“Miya!” the first one said, his face red with fury and the
impact of the wall.

She answered him in a flood of unintelligible speech,
g€sturing in disgust as the bat-thing launched off from her hands. I realized
suddenly that she had taken them both down with her telekinesis in less than a
minute.

The two men began to shout, pointing at me now. Her own
voice rose until they were all shouting at each other in Hydran.

I sat listening, stunned by the motion and noise, wondering
why the hell they even needed to speak out loud.

Suddenly Miya broke off. She looked toward the arched doorway
that opened on another room. The two men stopped, then; I heard a thin, high
cry from somewhere in the darkness beyond. For a moment longer the three of
them were silent, although their argument went on mind-to-mind, emotions
playing across their faces like sun and shadow. Then Miya ordered the two men
still with a motion of her hand and turned away like they’d disappeared. She
went through the doorway into the darkened room beyond.

The two men stood where her silent order had planted them;
their eyes never left me. They were both young, not much older than I was. Each
of them wore his pale hair long, held on top of his head by an ornate clip. The
hair clips were made of metul, in intricate, vision-knotting designs. I figured
the style must be traditional, because I’d never seen it on a human. I wondered
whether the clips had been shaped by hand or by thought.

The two Hydrans wore heavy, human-made jacketr ihut almost
disguised layers of faded traditional tunics and worn-looking pants; but no one
would have mistaken them for keiretsu. In another life, someone might have
mistaken them for my brothers.

I stood up, watched them shift uncertainly from foot to
foot. They weren’t carrying any weapons that I could see. I sat down again and
let them stare at me. “My name is Cat,” I said. My breath frosted. There was a
small radiant heater in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t enough. The room
was almost as cold as the outside air.

The two Hydrans went on staring, their faces expressionless.

Maybe they didn’t speak Standard. The bat-thing fluttered
around them like fear made visible. I kept waiting for it to attack lre, the
way the one at the Council meeting had. This one kept its distance.

Finally I looked away from them, down at the small globe resting
against my foot. I leaned over to pick it up, and a different tino of d6jd vu
fired every nerve-ending from my fingertips to my brain: It was warm, not cold
like glass, with an image inside it that could be changed at a whim, by a
thought ....
JLtst the way I’d known it would be.
This time the image
was a bat-thing. I sat back, cupping it in my hands, concentrating. Trying to
make the image transform into something else, anything else—

Norhing happened inside the globe or inside my head. I
looked up and saw the two Hydrans watching me.

They glanced at each other then, touching their heads and
grimacing. The one on the left said, “Why did she bring that freak
here?
”

“Maybe so we can see for ourselves what happens if we get
too friendly with the Humans.” The second one smirked; his elbow dug the first
one in the side. They laughed.

It took me a couple of breaths to rcaLtze that they were
speaking Hydrarl ... and that I understood it. They were communicating out loud
on purpose, because they thought I didn’t understand their language, laughing
at me to prove they weren’t afraid of me.

I thought about tt a little longer, listened to them make a
few more remarks, sorted through the datafeed still downloading the Hydran
language into my brain. And then, very carefully, I said, “Call me anything you
want to. Just don’t think I won’t know it.” In Hydran.

They froze, their surprise fis naked as if I’d sent the
thought straight into their minds.

Miya reappeared in the doorway. “Who said fi1a1—’1” She
looked at me. “You—?” She was holding a child. A human child. Joby. “You know
our language?” she demanded, in Hydran.

“For about an hour now,” I answered in Hydran, surprised to
find that speaking it was easier than understanding someone else ... I’ll be
better at it tomorrow.” I forced a smile, watching her expression turn
unreadabre. Hearing myself speak Hydran was like dreaming wide awake.

“This is Joby—?” I asked. Miya’s eyes warned me off as I
started toward her. I slowed, approaching her and the boy as carefully as I
could.

Joby lifted his head from her shoulder to look at me. His
eyes were wide and dark, human eyes. He was wrapped in layers of heavy
sweaters; a knitted cap was pulled down over his ears to protect him from the
cold. His face was soft with uncertainty, but he could have been any little boy
just wakened out of sleep. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him.

“Hey, Joby.” I smiled at him, and after a moment the ghost
of a smile touched his mouth too. He rubbed his face. Miya moved forward this
time, bringing him closer to me. He put out a hand, touched my ear, the earring
I wore in it.

He pulled his hand back again. The bat-thing appeared over
his head, fluttering around him, still making sounds so high that I could
barely hear them. He watched it fly, gravely.

I glanced at Miya, expecting to find her still watching me,
judging me, not expecting the look of strained concentration that shut me out
entirely. She kissed Joby gently on the top of his head and turned away,
carrying him back into the darkened room.

I followed her this time. The others didn’t try to stop me.
I stood in the doorway as she settled him on a sleeping mat and pulled a
blanket over him. She sat beside him on the floor, with her hand stroking his
hair.

“I thought he had neurological damage,” I said. “He doesn’t
look damaged.”

She glanced up, startled. Her face closed as her attention
left him for me. She took her hand away from his head, deliberately; her look
forced me to keep watching him.

I watched him shift under the blanket, his arms and legs drawing
up and in until he was curled like a fetus. He began to make a sound, the high,
thin keening I’d heard before. It was worse, seeing it happen in front of my
eyes. I forced myself to go on watching, but I didn’t want to.

“You see?” she said, almost angrily. And then, almost
wearily, she said, “You see.”

I nodded, looking away finally, looking down.

The keening stopped as she turned back to him; I imagined her
reaching out to him with her mind as she reached out with her hand, soothing
and reassuring him.

At last she took her hand away. He lay quietly, breathing
softly, almost asleep. She got to her feet and came toward me; I stepped back
into the main room as she unhooked a blanket and dropped it across the doorway
behind us.

“He Seemed ... SO nOrmal,” I mUttered, and had a hard time
meeting her eyes.

She leaned against the wall, as if suddenly everything had
gotten to be too much effort.

“you have to do everything for him?” I asked, but it wasn’t
really a question. “Without !os—”

She stared into space, holding on to herself as if she were
still holding Joby. “Without me he has no control over his autonomic nervous
system ... he’S trapped inside himself.”

“Is he aware of what’s going on around him, without you?
Does he get any inPut?”

“Some.” She moved away from the wall, glancing back at the
doorway as she crossed the room. “He has great difficulty making sense of what
he does get, unless I help him to pattern it. When he’s with his parents—” She
broke off self-consciously, moved to sit down on the bench by the wall, drawing
her feet up.