Dreamfall (24 page)

I let my breath out as I realized that she’d just answered
one of the doubts that had been on my mind across the river: She really hadn’t
been lying to me. She hadn’t kidnapped Joby to make some point by hurting or
killing him.

Her whole body folded in on itself for a long moment before
she raised her head again. ‘At least he knows them, (low, when they’re with him
....”

I watched her blink too much as she glanced at the two other
Hydrans. They were sitting on the floor no\ry, cross-legged and still, watching
us. She was speaking Standard again, and I suspected that it wasn’t just for my
sake. She was a part of HARM, I didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that;
she’d taken Joby because she believed it would help her people, even though
right then I couldn’t imagine how.

But it was just as obvious that she wasn’t happy about betraying
the people whose child she’d taken, even if they were human.

DKEAMF’ALL / 161

I didn’t press her about the questions that were still on my
mind. Somehow just knowing this much made the rest of the answers easier to
wait for. I glanced toward the room where Joby was sleeping again. “Is he ever
going to be any better?”

She looked surprised, like she’d been expecting the obvious
questions. “He is better—better than when I began doing therapy for him.
Whenever I work with him, I help him pattern what input his brain receives;
each time his mind retains some of the patterning. Eventually he should be able
to interact on his own. He’s so strong, and he wants it so musfu—” She broke
off again, biting her lips, as if she’d suddenly remembered how things had
changed for both of them.

I remembered the holo I’d seen of Joby. She was right; he
was better now, if what I’d seen tonight was any proof. I looked at her face,
seeing the fatigue and strain that were just as clear, now that I knew how much
it had cost her to work with him ... what it had cost her to bring him here. I
tried again to make the two things fit together: why a human-hating Hydran
radical would work so hard to heal a human child if she’d only intended to use
him like this. I couldn’t make them fit, any more than I could read her mind
... a(ly more than I could stop looking at her face, or believing everything I
saw in her eyes ....

I looked awr!, at the two men still sitting together near
the room’s other entrance—probably the one that led to the outside, from the
way they were watching it. There was nothing else in the room except the heavy
fiber rug they were sitting on. Its surface was littered with food containers
and bits of unidentifiable trash. The rug was so worn that I couldn’t tell what
color its patterned surface had originally been, or whether the faded blotches
had ever been a pattern and not random stains. We were somewhere in Freaktown,
but it could have been a room in Oldcity.

I looked back at Miya. “They’ll never let you see Joby
again, once he’s returned to his parents ....” I forced myself to finish it. “What’s
going to happen to him then? Or isn’t he going home—?”

“Of course he is,” she snapped, but she shook her head, as
if she was shaking off doubt. “The Council does nothing except get rich at the
expense of the Community. Someone has to fight for our future, before we don’t
have one left—” She broke off. “Our demands are not unreasonable. The FTA
observers are here because Tau broke promises, not just to Contract Labor but
to its own citrzens. We want the FTA to see that Tau has
never
kept a
promise to us. A11 we want is justice ... and there can never be any justice
until someone knows the truth.” Her hands tightened over the edge of the bench.
“We’11 return Joby to the FTA’s observers, when they come. And one of our
demands will be that I’m allowed to go on caring for Joby, to prove what our
Gift has to offer Humans. To prove we can be trusfsd—”

“Well, you’re off to a great start,” I said.

Her eyes glanced off my face, and she frowned. She folded
her arms and crossed her legs, as if her whole body was shutting me out.

“Miya ....” I looked up at the small, high window above our
heads. Its surface was fogged with moisture; I couldn’t see out. The bat-thing
crouched on the window ledge, watching us, calm but alert. “I can see how much
you care about Joby. And I believe HARM only wants to make things better for
Hydrans. But this—kidnapping—doesn’t make sense. You’ve spent a lot of time
across the river. You know Tau’s Board will never see the situation HARM’s way—”

“If they try to lie to us, we’ll know,” she said flatly.

“They can lie to each other!” I said. ‘And you’d never know
that until it was too late.” She went on looking at me, but suddenly I felt
like I was talking to a personality sim; the lights were oil, but she wasn’t
home anymore. “What made you—made HARM—believe a combine Board would count the
life of one child equal to their own self-interest?”

“YOU dOn’1—”

“Miya!” A woman’s voice, hard with anger, called her name
behind me. I felt a sudden draft.

Something pulled me around where I stood, almost pulling me
off my feet. I caught my balance, suddenly face-to-face with another Hydran
stranger. Invisible hands of thought held me in front of her as she looked me
over. I felt her try my mind’s defenses; felt them turn her back. Three more
Hydrans, a woman and two men, had materialized behind her. They were dressed
like the two men already standing across the room; the woman

DKEAMF’ALL I 165

holding me prisoner looked like the rest of them. But there
was no question in my mind that she was their leader.

She made a noise that was half querulous, half relieved, as
if she’d searched me mentally and discovered I was unarrned. Her telekinetic
snare let me go, slamming me back against the wall.

As she turned toward Miya again, I realized that something
about her was familiar. The Hydrans I’d met on this world still looked more
alike than different to me; the differences between Hydrans and humans still
stood out more than their individual features. But this time I was sure of the
resemblance—in their faces, in the way they moved; in the way something about
them held my eyes even when I was free to look away:
She was Miya’s sister.

Their expressions and gestures were all I needed to tell me
they were arguing. I didn’t have to guess why. The two HARM members who’d been
sitting sullenly across the room got up and joined in; probably they’d called for
the reinforcements. None of them looked at me now, like I’d become as invisible
physically as I was mentally.

Finally I said, in Hydran, “I’m here. Why don’t you ask me
about it?”

Miya’s sister turned back to me. “Because you have nothing
to do with it,” she snapped in Hydran. But her eyes stayed on me too long. I
felt her probe my defenses again, trying to be certain that my mind was really
as walled in as it seemed.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have Joby,” I said. “If
it wasn’t for ffi€, your sister would be drugged in a cell on the other side of
the river, with the Corpses trying to beat everything she knows about you out
of her.”

She frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Personal experience.” I touched my face.

She shook her head. “I mean, how do you know our language?
How do you know she is my sister?” She jerked her head at Miya.

I shrugged. “I accessed a datafeed. And I used my eyes.”

“Or maybe Tau gave you the information, along with the beating,
to make us believe you,” she said. “How can we know for sure, when your mind is
closed to us?”

I laughed as I thought about what she’d see if she could
read my mind. She glared at me. I stopped laughing as I realized there was
nothing funny about my situation here. Suddenly nothing was funny, or simple: not
for me, not for Joby or his parents, not for anyone on this side of the river.
I glanced toward Miya.

She realized it too. “Naoh,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t
have brought him here if I wasn’t sure about him.”

“How can you be sure? He’s closed!” Naoh touched her head. “I’m
not sure about you, since that night—” She broke off. I looked at Miya,
su{prised.

Emotion darted like a silver fish deep in Miya’s eyes; was
gone again, even as I realtzed that same emotion had been there every time she
looked at me.

“I don’t know why you brought him at all,” Naoh said,
pulling her sister’s attention back. “Why are you obsessed with this—halfbreed?”

Miya flushed. “He saved my life! And without him, where
would our future be?”

Naoh only shook her head, frowning. She turned back to me. “If
anyone tries to find this place, because of you”—s[s made what I took for an
obscene hand gesture—5’fi1ey’11 find it empty.”

I didn’t try to answer. I was having enough difficulty just
following the flood of spoken Hydran, the unspoken subtexts.

“What were you doing at a Council meeting,” Naoh demanded, “with
Hanjen and those other
da kah
traitors, and Tau’s Hydran Affairs Agent?”

I wondered what
da kah
meant. Probably the human
version of it had four letters. There was no profanity at all in my Hydran
headfile; Tau even censored its translator programs. “Tau made me go to the
Council meeting,” I said. “Can you speak more slowly—I’m not very good at this
yet. The other night I was just ... in the wrong place,” wondering suddenly if
there really was such a thing as an innocent bystander. “I came to Refuge to do
ressnlsfi—”

“To try to ‘explain’ the reefs and ‘understand’ the
cloud-whales?” Naoh said, her voice knife-edged. “Only Humans would think of
that.”

“Spare me,” I said. “I’m stuck in the middle of this because
of you people, and I don’t like that. But I am half Hydran; I wouldn’t do
anything that would hurt the Community. A11 I want is for the boy to get safely
home. All Tau really wants is to get the boy back. It’s not too lvfs—”

“No. This is what Tau wants—!” Naoh said fiercely. A jug sitting
on the floor flew up into the at, just missing my head, and smashed down.
Shards pelted my feet. “They want that, for us! Until nothing is left.”

“Naoh!” Miya said; she jerked her head toward the room where
Joby slept.

I toed the smashed pottery on the floor around my feet. “If
you think that’s what Tau wants, then what do you expect to get out of
committing acts of terrorism, except more trouble?”

Naoh shook her head, like I was some brainwipe who’d exhausted
the last of her patience. She glanced at Miya and pointed her hand at me.

Miya hunched forward on the bench, looking resigned. In
Standard, she said, “Naoh wants me to explain, because she finds speaking—” She
broke off, like she’d been about to say
to yor,
“She finds it ...
tiring. I’m used to it.” She sighed, locking her hands over one knee. “Obviously,
we know about the FTA’s investigation of Tau.”
Probably because she ‘d told
them.
“How often would we have a chance to ... communicnfg”—she touched her
head—“with someone who might actually help us against Tau? Naoh had a sending;
she saw the Way—”

Miya hesitated, searching my face for comprehension. She
looked relieved as I nodded. “We have to make ourselves
felt,
now. There
will never be another chance like this. Naoh saw it: we have to reach them now;
we had to do something that would make them understand our pain.”

I glanced at the darkened doorway. “So you took Joby.” I wondered
whose idea that had been. Somehow I didn’t think it had been hers. “That must
have been a hard thing to do,” I said.

Her head came up; her eyes filled with something I almost
thought was gratitude. “Yes,” she murmured. “But I had to do it.” She looked at
her sister.

“The Feds don’t even know about the kidnapping,” I said. ‘And
I don’t think they’re going to hear about it from Tau.”

“But they have to find out,” Miya repeated. “Thking Joby
will bring us everything we’ve fought for. Naoh saw the Way.” She glanced at
Naoh while something silent went on between them.

“Tau censors its communications and media web; you ought to
know that. If they don’t want the Feds to hear about the kidnapping, then the
Feds won’t. Joby’s parents aren’t going to talk if Tau tells them not to. It
would be treason.”

“But you can tell them!” Naoh said. “Now I see—it was meant
to happen, your coming here. You only followed the Way.” She glanced at Miya,
back at me; something made me look away from her eyes. “Because of you, the FTA
will hear us out.”

“Do you really believe their coming here will do any good?”
I asked.

“Don’t you?” she demanded. “You live with the Humans. The
combines are afraid of the FI[A—”

I nodded. “But ...” I had a sudden image of the two Feds,
Givechy and Osuna, coming here.
But the FTA doesn’t give a damn about you.
I
looked down again.

Miya frowned, as if she was so used to reading a human face
that she saw the truth in mine. I watched her doubt spread to Naoh and then the
others waiting impassively around us.

“So you still think we’re fools,” Naoh said bitterly.

“Yes,” I said, thinking about how much pain this kidnapping
had caused already; how much more pain there was going to be before the
aftershocks stopped coming. I looked away at the other HARM members standing in
the room, at the anger and hunger in their young/old faces, knowing what they
must be feeling right now, knowing I ought to feel the same way. But I only
felt empty.

“
Mebtaku,
”
Naoh muttered, looking at me. I
couldn’t translate it.

Miya spun around to glare at her. “
Show
him the Way,
Naoh,” she said fiercely. She glanced at me. “More of the Way is hidden than we
can say in words.”

“There’s no point. The
an lirr
will come back sooner
than this one will find the Way.” Naoh made a sharp motion with her hand, that
probably went with
Get him out of here.
Behind her the others shifted
restlessly; their expressions were a chorus of suspicion and resentment.