Dreamfall (38 page)

When his face and voice were under control again, he said, “Their
parents were my closest friends, like family. They were detained, along with
some others, after a demonstration years ago, when the girls were small. After
they were released and sent back here, there was an illness—some called it a
plague—that spread through the Community. Many people became sick; the ones who
had been detained were the first. Some of the sick ones died—including my
friends. Those who recovered were sterile.”

“Shit,” I breathed. “Miya ... and Naoh—?” I got up, crossed
the room to sit at the table beside him.

He nodded, his mouth crushed into a line. “The illness
struck only the Community, not the Humans. Some people iaid the Humans caused
it.”

I shook my head, more in disbelief than denial. “fs that ...
Do you know for cerlsin—?”

“I have never seen proof of it.” He meant seen proof of it
in a Human mind. “I know some who believe they have. The Humans say they don’t
know where the plague came from; that the cloud-whales created it, or it was
something from the sacred ground ....”

The reefs.
“I don’t know. The Humans synthesized a
vaccine, but not until many of us had died—or become sterile”‘

I wondered whether that was why I’d seen so few children in
Freaktown, why his voice had broken when he’d spoken the word to Perrymeade ...
why he lived alone, with no sign of ever having had any family except, once,
Miya and her sister. I didn’t ask; couldn’t. “Did you know—about the Satoh,
about Naoh, and what Miya was planning?”

“No,” he said, almost angrily. “Not until tonight. I had not
seen Naoh in a long time. She became bitter—she was always $i6s1—” He broke
off. “Miya was very young when their parents died; perhaps she doesn’t
remember, the way Naoh does. But—” His gaze turned distant. “Naoh always saw
the Way as a straight line .... Miya saw it as a spiral. She totd me once that
the Way is meant to lead to wisdom, not to haPPiness.”

“Oblivior1,” I muttered. “That’s where Naoh’s Way is leading
them. She’s like quicksand, and she’s sucking Miya down with the rest of them.”

He nodded, resting his head in his hands again. “r always believed
Miya was the strong one—in her Gift and her resolve. But perhaps Naoh’s
sickness is stronger than both of them.”

“Miyu said that Naoh’s ‘vision’ made her Gift more powerful—or
gave her more reason to use it.”

“I have seen enough perversions of the Gift in my lifetime
to believe that anything is possible.” His voice was heavy with resignation.

“.Miya loves Joby, maybe too much ....” The words caught in
my throat like thorns. Miya didn’t need a reason to love him like that, beyond
who she was, and who he was.
But to lose him, knowing she’d never see him
again, never have a child of her own ....
“She’s afraid of losing him to
the HumaIlS,” I said, at last. “That makes her vulnerable.”

Don’t get involved.
That was what Oldcity had taught
me.
The cost was too high.
Hope, trust, love—they were only stones
around your neck when you were already drowning. But then Jule taMing had come
into my life and made me believe that a lifeline of trust, an outstretched
hand, were all that could save you ....

Now, sitting here, I wondered for the first time since then
if maybe the streets had been right.

“What is your involvement with Miya?” Hanjen asked me,
suddenly, sharply.

I looked up, startled. “r ... we ...” I took a deep breath. “Nasheirtah
....” Suddenly certain, ztS I said it, that Jule taMing had always known the
truth.

“Nasheirtah?” He stared at me. I wondered what he found so
unbelievable: that she could have any feeling at all for somebody damaged the
way I was or that somebody like me was capable of loving anyone that way.

But then he reached over and touched my shoulder, as gently
as a thought. He smiled, painfully, before he drew his hand back again. I
wondered which of us was more surprised.

I rested my head on my hands, staring at the dark years of Hydran
history trapped in the wood grain of the table surface. “I have to find Miya,”
I said, finally. I looked up at him when he didn’t answer. “How? Tell me how to
do that. You must be able to ... ttack her mind-print, if you’ve known her for
so long—”

He nodded, the lines deepening in his weathered face. He
looked sucked dry of any emotion, no matter how painful or urgent== now. “I can
probably find her, if she’s still here in the city. If Naoh has taken them into
the outback, it will be virtualiy impossible.” He rubbed his face. “But I must
sleep first. you should rest too, or you will be no good to Miya or anyone.” He
got slowly to his feet.

I opened my mouth to say that we didn’t have time. I looked
down at my strengthless body barely supported by the tabletop. Finally I
nodded.

“You are welcome to a bed.” He gestured toward a side room
before he faded like a ghost through another doorway and into darkness.

I went into the room. It wasn’t a bed I found—it was a kind
of hammock, suspended midway between the ceiling and the floor. I went to it,
put my hands on it. It was chest-high; the only way I could see to get into it
would be to levitate myself. I sighed, and dumped the bedding out onto the
floor. I lay down on the hard, cold tiles and rolled up in the blankets. I was
asleep before I even had time to think about it.

I wore gaspTng and wet with sweat. Struggling up from a
dream about being strangled, I shook off the prison of tangled blankets. I sat
up, wondering for a few more breaths why I was sleeping on the floor ...
whether I was really still in Oldcity ....
No==Not Old-city. Freaktown.

I got up and stumbled out through a fog of sleep into the centrat
room, the last place I’d seen Hanjen before I’d gone to bed. The room was gray
with dawn. Hanjen was already up—sitting perfectly still in a chair, staring at
nothing.

“.Hanjen—?” My heart missed a beat. But he wasn’t dead; he
was using his psi, searching telepathically for Miya, or Naoh.
You looked
like you were dead ....
More than one Human had said that to me when I was
using my Gift. I understood now why most Humans didn’t like to see it.

Hanjen was back, suddenly, dropping out of his trance state
like my entering the room had triggered some sensory alarm.

“Any luck?” I asked, startling myself as I realized I’d
spoken Standard. I came on into the room.

“ ‘lJuck—’ ? “ he repeated, cocking his head.

“Finding them. Did You find them?”

comprehension came back into his face. “No ... and yes. I
have not located either of them yet. But I have crossed the trail of HARM. Naoh
has sent the Satoh out to feed the Community’s outrage over what Tau did at the
monastery. They claim that the time Naoh foresaw has come—that if our people
rise up now, with one mind, together we can make the Humans disappear from our
world.”

“But that’s crazy—” I broke off. He already knew that as
well as I did ... what are you going to do?” I asked as he rose from his seat.

“I have contacted the Council; we are already trying
together to stop this sickness from spreading.”

Just sitting there
—
7
I remembered where I was
now and didn’t ask. I wondered when I was going to stop thinking like a Human
... worse, 3n unplugged one. “what about Miya and Joby?”

He shook his head, already looking distracted again. “This
must be stopped first, or finding Joby will not matter.”

I swallowed my protest and asked, “Where’s Grandmother?”

He half frowned as he refocused ... Why?”

“Because finding Miya and Joby still matters to he== and it
will still matter to you after you find Naoh. And I can’t do it without a
telepath to help me.”

“I will ask her,” he said. His attention faded again. I
waited, feeling my frustration climb like a fever, until finally his attention
was back in the same room with me.

“She will help you. But I cannot send you to her; it would
take too much of my strength, and I need that.”

“well ...” I rubbed my head. “Is she going to come here,
then?”

His frown came back, as if I was confusing him for no
reason. “She has never been here—”

So she couldn’t teleport to u,s.
And it would be
harder for her to walk here than for me to walk there, wherever there was ....
I began to see what he was getting at. “Have you got a map?”

He nodded, looking relieved. A marker appeared in his hand,
out of nowhere. He looked around the room until his eyes settled on a piece of
packaging in a bin that must have been used for trash. The wrapper drifted
across the room to him; he reached up and picked it out of the air. Flattening
it on the bench beside him, he began to make marks on it, with long hesitations
between lines. At last he looked up at me, expectant; when I didn’t move he
gestured me toward him impatiently.

I went and stood beside him, realiztng how difficult it must
be for him to do this, when he could have simply
shown
it to anyone else
he knew, laid it straight into their brain like a datafeed.

I thought again about how Humans had needed to find ways
around their lack of the Gift. They’d had to learn how to build their own
bridges across every chasm—between two or a thousand isolated minds. That was
why it had taken them so much longer to get into space—where distances were so
great, and the energy sources a psion could tap into to boost their power were
so limited, that all bets were off and tech was the only real answer to the
question. I wondered whether the fact that Humans had been forced to try harder
to get there would mean that they stayed there longer.

I supposed it didn’t really matter, at least to me, since
the way things were going I’d be lucky to live until tomorro\il.

I wondered whether Hanjen knew enough about maps to get me
across the infinitesimally small part of the planet that separated me from
Grandmother. I stood beside him, watching and listening as he did his best to
describe in words—
c/umsy, awkward, imperfect words
—the route to where
she was staying, and I used what senses I had left to try to understand him. “It
isn’t fa(==was the only thing he said that reassured me.

I took the scrap from his hand and started to turn away.

“I’m soffy I can’t do more to help you,” he said. “But thank
you for what you afe trying to do to help us ... and Miya,”

I looked back at him, su{prised as he made a small bow.

“,If we each follow the Way we see, perhaps there is twice
the chance that we will reach the end we hope for.”

I nodded.

He pointed toward the front door. I followed the hallway to
the entrance and stopped. The door had no doorknob, no touchplate, no automatic
eye that I could see. “Open door,” I said. There was no voice-activated
microprocessor in the wall, either. “Hanjel—!” I shouted.

The door opened. I almost stepped through rt; grabbed the
doorframe as I realized we were on the second floor and there weren’t any
steps. Looking down I could see broken masonry along the wall, where steps had
probably been once. I swore and turned around. Hanjen was standing there,
looking at me. As he went on watching me, invisible arms gently closed me in.
They lifted me and carried me down to street level. I landed lightly on my
feet, glanced up just in time to see the door close again.

I looked away down the dawn-red street. There were dozens of
Hydrans already out and moving. I was surprised to see the street so busy, so
early in the morning. I wondered whether Hydrans always got up at dawn or
whether the activity meant something I didn’t want to think about.

None of them seemed to see anything strange in the way I’d arrived
at ground level. Most of them seemed to be walking, like I was, not drifting
over the ground or teleporting in and out of existence. But even moving the
same way they did, dressed in the same clothes they wore, I’d never
feel
like
one of them when they tried to touch my mind. No matter how alien I felt among
Humans, I realized I’d always be more Human than Hydran ... always a mebtaku;
and my mind’s barriers were like a raised fist, a deliberate insult to every
passing stranger.

Nobody spoke to me or even directly acknowledged me as I
kept walking. But word about me traveled ahead: I started to notice people
waiting at the sides of the street or looking out of windows to silently watch
me pass. I met their stares, letting them see my eyes, the long slit pupils,
trying to keep them from seeing any fear there.

There were no signs marking any of the streets here. I held
the map in a death grip; felt a little safer every time I spotted another
landmark Hanjen had described. As I walked I wondered how I’d ever get up to
his door again. And I wondered if there’d never been anyone here who’d been
crippled in an accident or been born with a genetic flaw, disabled in either
body or mind—anything that kept them from doing the kinds of things other
Hydrans did. Maybe the Community had better support systems than Humans did for
taking care of their own, always ready to help each other—

But I remembered Naoh’s addict lover, all the other junkies
and derelicts I’d seen. They’d made themselves as helpless as I was, and no one
had done anything about it. I remembered what Hanjen had said, remembered the
primitive med center Miya and Naoh had shown me.
Maybe no one could.

And then I wondered what it would be like to spend the rest
of my life this way: walking a gauntlet of stares, not able to do things for
myself that everybody else took for granted ... with no one I could count on,
if I didn’t find Miya. Even if I did, what was going to happen if I couldn’t
make her listen—?

More and more people were out in the street now, a river of
them flowing past. I wondered where they were going in such a hurrlr. Some of
them muttered curses as they passed me or bumped me harder than they needed to.
Once or twice I got shoved from behind, so hard that I stumbled. But when I
spun around, nobody was close enough to have touched me. I began to wonder
whether I’d even get as far as Grandmother’s.