Dreamfall (34 page)

“Others have tried. My parents ....” The words were even flatter.
I thought about Naoh again; what she believed it took to be a revolutionary. “They’re
dead. And Navu—you saw what happened to him. He became an addict in Tau’s
prison.”

The sick will be healed, and the lost will find their
Way,
Naoh had said. I wondered whether she thought that included Navu. I
shook my head. “How does Borosage get away with it? Where does he get the
power?”

“He fllls a Vacuum,” she said, her voice thick. “No Human
who has enough power to control him cares enough to do it.”

I swore under my breath. The sight of scar tissue as I
looked down at my bare wrist made my stomach knot. I rubbed it, as if I could
rub it away.

Joby was building castles. I watched him pile on one more
block, watched as the whole structure came tumbling down. He sat there, kicking
at the blocks with his feet and frowning. Then, silently, he began to build
again. I looked back at Miya. “Where did Naoh go?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know .... Out into the Community, to
show our people Tau’s threats—”

“And about HARM’S ... the Satoh’s part in it?” I asked. ‘About
the kidnapping? Is that why you took Joby: to force a crisis with Tau?”

“(No!)” she said, with anger I felt as well as heard.

“Then why involve him at all?”

“Naoh,” she murmured; her contact slipped through the
fingers of my mind as something disappeared from her eyes. “Naoh said it was
necessary. I didn’t want to believe that. But ... it was necessary. She showed
me ....”

I got up and moved across the room, stood staring out
through the dusty panes of the single small window. I searched for the reefs,
knowing they were out there somewhere in the distance beyond the blurred
profile of Freaktown. I couldn’t even lie to myself that they were within range
of my sight. I thought about Kissindre and the team working somewhere out there
... \ryondered what they’d been told about me this morning, what they’d

DKEAMF’ALL I 227

think when they found out the truth—if they ever did. I wondered
whether my defection would ruin any chance of continuing their research; if
Kissindre would wind up hating me.

I touched my wrist; looked down at it again. No matter what
I wanted, without a databand I could never go back to the life I’d had on the
other side.

For a second I lost my grip on everything; the knot of
denial holding me together came undone, and the fragments of my self spun away
into free-fall—

I pulled myself together again, not wanting Miya to see me
falter, not wanting her to think she was the one that I had doubts about. I
stood with my back to her until I was completely certain that I was still on
solid ground; still in Freaktown, staring out through a single filthy pane of
glass at the same unreachable view.

“Bian,” Miya murmured. At first I didn’t realize that she
was speaking my name. (Bian.)

“What?” I said. My voice was a shambles.

She was standing barely an arm’s length from me as I turned
around. I flinched in surprise, even as she reached out to me. “Bian,” she
repeated, gently, as if she was trying to remind me of something. “You arc part
of us now ... but Naoh was right, you don’t know what that means. You need to
know. Let me show you. Come with me.” She took hold of my hands, drawing me
forward.

I took a deep breath and followed her back across the room.
She leaned down to pick up Joby. He reached up to me. I held out my arns, and
she settled him into them. The weight of his small body felt good, solid,
anchoring me in reality. I saw the lines of strain above her eyes ease just a
little. “Miya,” I said, “we don’t have time. Borosage isn’t going to give us
the time. We’ve got to find a way to neutralize him. Tau’s already let him off
his leash.”

“Naoh has a plan,” she repeated, looking distracted, looking
at Joby. “She’s seen the Way. If we follow her vision, we won’t die—we’ll win. ‘We’ll
be given everything we need to rebuild our world. I trust her ....”

I kept silent, wishing that I did. For the first time since
I’d lost control of my Gift, I saw a reason to be glad I still had the defenses
that kept the world out. Because they kept Naoh out. Even when we were alone
Miya couldn’t see the situation objectively, free of Naoh’s mind-clouding
paranoia. I only saw now how much of Miya’s concentration was bound up in
caring for Joby. How it could make her easy to use.

I didn’t like thinking that, but Naoh was using her,
intentionally or not, using her trust, using what was good in her against her.
Sucking her into the Satoh’s mindset until she was too deeply involved to see
anything independently. “Who else do you trust? Hanjen? The oyasin—?”

She frowned as I mentioned Hanjen. I remembered what Naoh
had said about him.

“The oyasin,” I repeated. “We need to ask her how she sees
this. Tau’s probably got her under surveillance ... can you get us to the
monastery?”

Miya nodded. She looked dubious, but her eyes were registering
me again, like I’d finally said something that didn’t short out her resolve. I
watched her gather herself, felt her gather me in, the boy in my arms ... the
boy inside me, afraid of the dark and yet hungry for it ...

And everything changed, went black/white—

We were standing inside the white walren of the monastery’s
walls. A handful of running children passed us; I watched them scatter like
startled mice. They darted away into doorways farther down the hall.

Then they came back, one by one. Some of them were trailed
by adults, mostly women. They gathered silently at the far end of the hall to
stare at us.

Grandmother appeared; the gathering separated without anyone
glancing back. She moved through them toward us. I wasn’t sure where she’d come
from, but it didn’t really matter.

“Namaste,” she said to us as placidly as if we weren’t
hunted fugitives with a kidnapped child between us, but only one more family of
refugees seeking shelter. “I knew you would come.”

I made a bow, following Miya’s, biting my tongue against asking
how she’d known it this time. Instead I asked, “Is it safe for us to be here?
Safe for you?”

Grandmother nodded once but touched her finger to her lips. “For
now,” she said gently, in Hydran, as if she knew I’d understand it. She came
closer, her eyes on Joby. She didn’t try to take him from rrre, and yet there
was something in her manner that was like outstretched arrns. If I’d still had
any questions about whether she knew what the Satoh were doing, she’d just
answered them. But watching Miya out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face
change as if Grandmother had taken a burden from her—one that I couldn’t help
her carry, one that I couldn’t even see. Grandmother touched Joby lightly, almost
like a blessing, while he smiled at her as if he knew the touch of her hand,
the touch of her mind.

“Oyasin,” Miya munnured, glancing down almost humbly. “We
have come to ask you to help us see the Way clearly.” She looked at me, and I realized
she was speaking out loud for my sake. “My sister says that she has seen the
future. But Bian sayq what she sees is wrong ....” She broke off, and I saw the
emptiness in her eyes, as if suddenly she couldn’t see any future at all ahead
of us.

The silence stretched between them while she shared everything
she’d heard with Grandmother. I waited, watching their faces.

At last Grandmother nodded. She pressed her hands together;
her face lost all expression as her mind went somewhere else. I wondered
whether it was into the future.

Her eyes came alive again behind the transparent veil. She
looked at me. But all she said was, “We must go now.”

And before I could ask where, I felt the vortex of two minds
begin to re-form space around me, pulling me and Joby away again to somewhere
else.

I sucred in a breath of cold air, another full of surprise
as I realized where we were. “The reefs—” I murmured. Joby squirmed and
stiffened in my afiIls. I rubbed his back until he quieted, trying to stabtbze
my own senses as we adjusted to the solid ground that was suddenly under my
feet again.

Miya nodded. “The oyasin ... she says the Way isn’t clear to
her, either. She only saw that you ... we ... needed to come here.” She turned
to the view around us, and then, with what looked like both reverence and
resignation, she made a small bow of acknowledgment.

We were standing on the river shore, but nowhere near the
spot where the research team had been collecting data. The skyline of sheared
hillsides and ovate hummocks, the play of light and shadow, was the same and
yet entirely different, like the same stars viewed from a different world.

I thought about the team again. They were probably already
back on the Human side of the river. I thought again about the half life that
had been all the life I’d had, until a few days ago ... the life that I’d given
up entirely in order to have this one. I looked at Miya, holding my breath
until the moment passed.

And then I asked, “‘W’hat now?” I turned back to Grandmother,
watched her turn through a circle, bowing to the beauty around us. When she’d
completed the circle, she bowed again toward the deeper shadows below the cliff
face. I realized there was an overhang of the reef there, maybe even a cave.

The oyasin settled herself on the stony beach, wrapped in a
heavy cloak she hadn’t been wearing when we left the monastery. She looked up
and saw me looking at her.

“I knew that it would be cold,” she said, smiling in that
way I never knew whether to take at face value. She held out her affns. “I will
keep him. While you follow the Way.”

I glanced at Miya, because Grandmother was still looking at
me.

“Both of us,” Miya murmured to me, and nodded.

I carried Joby to Grandmother, settled him into her affns.
He went to her willingly, and there didn’t seem to be any change in how he
responded. He watched everything that was happening around him with silent
curiosity; he didn’t look surprised or even worried. That was what it would be
like to be a Hydran child, I thought: secure no matter where you were, as long
as you could feel the presence of people who loved you inside your mind. I
realtzed that once there must have been a time when I’d felt that way, in a
time I couldn’t even remember.

Grandmother began to talk to Joby, & soft munnur that I
realtzed was Standard speech. She waved her hand, pointing out the reefs and up
into the golden evening air. I looked r’rp and saw taku darting randomly
overhead.

I glanced at Miya, feeling her relief break over me as Grandmother
freed her from the strain of holding Joby’s mind open. Still, there was nothing
that resembled a positive emotion in what she was feeling now. It struck me
that being Hydran didn’t mean freedom from fear, or grief, or pain, because all
those things would be shared mind-to-mind as intimately as love. I wondered how
much added effort it cost her to prevent her doubts from seeping into Joby’s
thoughts through the bond between them and making him afraid. She’d said that
he hadn’t spoken since she’d brought him across the ri.ver ....

Miya turned away as if she didn’t want me to go on looking
at her. She started down to the river’s shore. It was only then that I noticed
a boat pulled up onto the gravel. It was small, hardly more than a canoe, but
big enough for the two of us. There were more boats half hidden in shadows
beyond it.

I followed her along the shore, helped her push the boat
into the water. I climbed in, as unquestioning as if I knew what the hell we
were doing. Even knowing Naoh’s effect on her, somehow I trusted her the way
Joby trusted her: perfectly, instinctively, without reason—in a way I’d never
trusted anyone in my life.

There were no oars in the boat. There was no power unit that
I could see. And yet the boat began to move, not following the current but
nosing deeper into the shadows of the overhanging reef.

Taku fluttered in and out of the darkness above us. Peering
up at the roof of the overhang, I made out pale random blotches on its mossy
surface, like wads of cobweb ...
nests.
I wondered whether the taku were
drawn to the reefs by their psi, whether the Hydrans were, as well. I wondered
again whether the creation of the taku had been a fluke of the cloud-whales’
dreams or a gift.

As we drifted farther into the darkness, the barely audible
cries of the taku faded until all that was left was the soft lapping of the
water. The opening reached deeper into the heart of the reef face than I’d
imagined. “fs this natural?” I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper as it
echoed out into the darkness. “Was it always here; did the river create it? Or
did—”
Your people. My people ..
.. I broke off, not certain how to phrase
it.

I saw her shoulders rise slightly in a shadow of a shrug. “I

don’t know,” she munnured. Her voice was distracted, as
though her thoughts were far away.

I thought about the depths of loss hidden inside those three
words, the lost history of a people without a past .... I thought about my own
life. I looked up again, trying to guess the dimensions of the space we were
entering now. There was still enough light to see clearly by, even though the
cavern entrance was far behind us. The heart of the reef was glowing, festooned
with pho-toluminescent growth. Stirred by the motion of our passing, the
hanging curtains gave off a pale aurora of light. It was wanner here too. The
reef seemed to breathe like something alive, exhaling warmth into the still
air, making the cold river water steam until we were adrift in a sea of fog.

All my senses felt smothered, as if we were moving through
some medium besides air. But it wasn’t like drowning ... it was good. I
remembered my last journey into the reefs; realized the cloud-whales’
thought-residue must be affecting me again. I let it happen, wanting it, ready
this time for anything ....