Dreamfall (42 page)

The others—the ones who hadn’t fallen asleep already—sat
watching her with vacant eyes. One of them pulled a taku out of a knotted
scarf. It lay in his hand, unnaturally limp and still. Tears filled his eyes
and ran down his face. He didn’t wipe them away, like he didn’t even have the
strength for that. I wondered if the dead pet in his hand was the same one I’d
seen the night I’d met the Satoh.

If any of the Satoh in the room with me now had anything
left to say, they weren’t saying it in a way that I could hear. One or two of
them still had the energy to pace, their footsteps echoing like unspoken anger
in the hollow silence.

Miya sat down beside me by the wall of crates and leaned
against my shoulder. She closed her eyes. I felt her exhaustion, her doubt, her
hope gutter out. Sleep began to overtake them all, the only escape that was
left to us. I closed my eyes, holding her; rested my head against hers where it
rested on my shoulder. I kissed her hair gently, wanting her, feeling the
warmth inside me become the hot ache of need ... not even minding that lust was
as impossible as hope, as long as I could hold her in my arms, in my mind ....

I woke again, not sure how much time had passed; startled
awake by a nightmare that had nothing to do with where my mind had been when I
dozed off. I shook my head, still stupefied with exhaustion, as Miya murmured “Naoh!”
beside me.

Naoh stood in the center of the room, surrounded by a
handful of others who must have arrived with her. They all looked dirty, defeated,
stunshocked. Naoh turned in a slow circle, studying the rest of us, all that
was left of the Satoh. We all looked just as bad. The turning reminded me of
Grandmother bowing in reverence to the world around her; but Naoh didn’t bow,
and there was nothing serene in her eyes. Her circling gaze stopped as it
reached Miya, resting beside me, our arms and legs tangled together like our
thoughts. She went on looking at us for what seemed like forever. I didn’t know
what was going through her mind; I only felt Miya’s body drawing up with
tension as her relief at seeing Naoh alive suddenly turned to anger again.

“You have followed the Way to safety,” Naoh said, aloud,
glancing at the others as she spoke. As her gaze came back to Miya, what looked
like relief finally showed on her face.

“Thank Bian,” Miya said. Her voice was too even, too controlled.
“What is that you’re wearing?” She gestured, and I saw something I halfway
recognized hanging from a strap around Naoh’s neck.

Naoh glanced down at it, up again. ‘A gas mask,” she said.

I glanced away at the others around us, only realizing now
that most of them had on the same thing. I swore under my breath.

“So you did believe me—?” Miya demanded. “When I told you
they would use the gas? You said it was a lie!”

Naoh shrugged. “It made sense. I thought we should be prepared.”

“But you went ahead with the rally. You didn’t warn the
Community. You let our people be hurt, killed, taken by Corporate Security—”

“It had to be done,” Naoh said calmly. “You know that it
did.”

“I know that’s what You believs—” Miya said. Her voice
thickened; she took a deeP breath. “‘W’here was mY gas mask, then, Naoh?”

“We didn’t have enough for everyone. Even within our group,
we had to draw lots,” Naoh snapped, “as you can see. Most people escaped
anyway. But you would have had a mask if you hadn’t left me when you did, for
him.” She jerked her hand at me, and suddenly I wondered whether she meant
at
the rally
or
for good.

“He came back to
us.
I said he would,” Miya answered.

Naoh’s mouth twisted. “Back to you, anyway.”

Miya frowned.

“That’s not true,” I said, realizing now that Naoh had been
letting me hear this for a reason. “You know how I feel about Tau. You know I
believe they have to be stopped. You can prove it, if you want to—” I broke
off, holding her gaze while I tried to think of what to say next, how to say it
in a way that wouldn’t make her turn on me again. If there was a chance in hell
of salvaging anything from this disaster, the only hope I had of finding it was
to stay close to Miya and Joby, and that meant staying with the Satoh.

“He was right about what would happen, Naoh,” Miya said. Her
voice was steady again. “Right about Tau. He saw the Way clearly. He showed us—”

“You have no precognition,” Naoh said to me. “You’re just a
telepath—not even that.” She dismissed my Gift with a wave of her hand.

“But I know how Humans think,” I said.

She frowned. “You were the one who proved to me that we
would Succeed—”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You said that it was possible to use the Gift to break into
the Humans’ computer net. If that was true, then there had to be ways to keep
the Humans from using their other technology against us.”

“Except you knew they’d use the gas,” I said.

“r didn’t
know
that,” she answered coldly. “r saw
that they might ... btlt the Way showed me that even if that did happen, we
would still win in the end. Even Humans have used nonviolent protest to force
their enemies out of their homeland. Miya told me of the Human leader Gandhi—”

“Gandhi?” I repeated, incredulous.

“He forced a Human government to free his people without
violence. The Allsoul answered his pralers—”

“God had nothing to do with it,” I snapped. “Gandhi got
lucky, that’s all.” The bitter pill of Earth history I’d swallowed whole spat
up the story from somewhere deep in my memory. “He was dealing with an empire
that was falling apart. Humans had just gone through a genocidal world war. The
colonial government didn’t want to look like genocides, so they backed off. And
that was Humans against Humans! If Gandhi had tried nonviolent protest on Tau,
he’d have been dead meat. So would all his followers. Just like we were today.
Tau doesn’t care; Tau doesn’t have to.” I got to my feet, pacing in front of
her. “If there’s a universal justice balancing the scales for you, where was it
today?” I waved a hand at the sullen survivors. “I didn’t see any miracles happen,
did you?”

“You have no right to question my vision!” She pointed at my
head. “The Way has many turnings! We gathered for a peaceful protest. The
Humans attacked us without provocation. When the reports go out over the Net,
everyone will know that. We
will
be saved in the end.”

“Damn it, you can’t be that naive!” My voice rose with my anger.
“Combines control everything about their communications. It’s lies, damn lies,
and corporate hype. There are no Indy News hypers here to report the truth;
what happened today will never reach the Net. I couldn’t even send a personal
message. Any proof of what happened to us is already buried in CorpSec’s files.”

“That isn’t true,” Naoh protested. Everyone’s eyes were on
us now. “This is too big. There were too many witnessesHuman witnesses. The FTA
will hear of it. And then it will all still happen as I said!” Her voice shook.

How is that going to bring back the deqd
—
?
Miya’s
hand tightened over my arm before I could say it. I felt her in my head,
begging me to stop: (She knows! Naoh knows what she’s done—)

I choked back the furious words, grateful that Naoh couldn’t
read my mind, as Miya made me realize what Naoh must be feeling when she looked
from face to face around this room. She must know that no more Satoh were coming
back; that she’d sacrificed God only knew how many other innocent lives for a
kind of justice that didn’t exist on this side of death ... &nd probably
not even on the other. Her holy vision was bleeding to death before our eyes,
her illusion of control lay smashed like an empty jug.

And yet I still believed in the things she believed in. I
knew that the things she wanted for our people, the things she’d made Miya and
all the rest willing to die for, were just and true.

I rubbed my face, wiping away all expression, realizing that
I had to stop pushing before I was the one who pushed Naoh over the edge. Any
murder a Hydran committed became a murder-suicide: I didn’t want to be
responsible for what happened when murder and suicide were exactly what someone
wanted. “Have you got a way to monitor the news?” I asked. “Does anyone over
here have a netlink—a headset, or even a threedy?”

“There are a few information kiosks,” Miya said. She glanced
at Naoh and back at me again, letting me feel her relief. “We can watch Tau’s
programming there.” She got up, crossing the room to pick up Joby as he woke
and began to make inarticulate cries.

“Then maybe someone ought to do that,” I said as Miya
soothed Joby and brought him back to my side. “Cat,” he ,uid, reaching out to
me, and I smiled as Miya settled him into my arrns.

I glanced at Naoh, saw her watching the three of us
together. Her eyes were unreadable, the pupils narrowed to slits. I looked
away.

“Daeh and Remu are already at the kiosk behind the shelter,”
Naoh mufinured, “waiting for news. They will let us know if they see something.”

I nodded, wondering how long they were going to keep that
vigil. No news was bad news, but any response at all from Tau was worse.
Feeling helpless, hating the feeling, I asked, ‘Are the news kiosks tied into Tau’s
comm net?”

“r suppoSe,” Miya said. Everyone else around her looked
blank. They’d never even had databands; they must all be as computer illiterate
as I’d been for most of my life. But maybe that was about to change ... maybe I
could change it. “Why?’ she asked.

“Because if we can pry open a cyberspace window, maybe we
can bypass their censors long enough to get a message off-world that would make
a diffelsnss—”

“What kind of a difference?” Naoh demanded. Her voice hovered
just this side of suspicion.

“In whether any of us have a reason to go on living,” I
said. “Or even a choice about it.” She frowned, but she was listening. “The
Gift lets you access properties of the quantum field to manipulate both matter
and energy. That includes the electromagnetic spectrum. The Net—where all the
Human Federation’s data is stored and processed—occupies part of the EM
spectrum. A psion who knows how can access the Net matrix ... even change it.”

“Then show us!” she said, her eyes coming alive. “Show us
now. With that we can take their power for ourselves, use it to destroy them
from the insids—”

I looked away, suddenly afraid of what was in her eyes. “It’s
not that simple. It isn’t simple at all. Tau’s internal security programs can
flatline an intruder—and that kills you just as dead as uny real-world weapon.
you can get lost inside the Net; if you do, your body sits and waits for you
until it starves to death. I might know enough to insert a message into their
off-world uplink, even without my databand. I’m not even sure I can do that
from a public access.” I looked at Miya again. “r need you to come with me. I
need your helP.”

“Why?” Naoh asked, the sharpness back in her voice.

“Because I can’t do what I need to do on my ovvn. And she’s
the only one of you who can get far enough into my head to follow me.” I went
on looking at Miya. “I need you”‘

She glanced at Joby, up at me again. She was the only one
here aside from me who knew enough about Human technology to have any
understanding of what this could mean. she nodded, with a strange light in her
eyes. “I’ll take you there.” She lifted Joby from my arms, touching me as she
did, and handed him to a woman named Ladu. I realized that she never gave him
to Naoh==She put her hand on my arm again as she glanced at Naoh. I wasn’t sure
whether she was helping herself focus or making a point. All I knew, &S her
sister looked back at us, was that whatever Naoh was feeling, it wasn’t good.

The whirlpool of spacial dislocation sucked me down into Miya’s
mind and away from there.

Tsn rwo nervous Satoh waiting in the shadows beneath a building’s
overhang actually jumped—and nearly jumped us—as we upl.ured on the street
beside them. They shook their heads, backing off, their fear fading to relief as
Miya silently explained why we were here.

Except for the four of us, the street was completely empty.
Across from where we stood was the information kiosk, a reminder of Tau’s
inescapable presence in the composite-and-alloy flesh. The kiosk’s fused surface,
with ghost-images floating through it, looked starkly alien against the
ancient, pitted walls.

I noticed that somehow someone had found a way to scrawl “FUCK
TALJ” in Standard on the kiosk’s impervious base and make it stick. I stopped
long enough to stare in admiration, wondering how they’d managed that.
Somewhere I’d heard that clothing wasn’t universal among intelligent beings,
but ornamentation was—the need to stand out, to be special. I wondered whether
that included writing on walls.

I looked back at the two Satoh waiting uneasily beside Miya.
“I need you to watch our backs,” I said, gesturing at the street. They glanced
at Miya and then nodded, drifting away through the shadows.

I waited until they’d gone as far as they were going to
before I crossed the open space to the kiosk.

Miya followed me. “You don’t want them to know what you’re
doing,” she said. It wasn’t really a question. She searched my face,
uncertain—because, I realized, I was uncertain.

I nodded, trying to center my attention on the displays. The
vidscreen was still spewing mindless co{porate hype, as if nothing desperate or
tenible or criminally insane had happ.ned today, as if every moment was only a
replay of the same perfect moment in the best of all possible worlds .... “Welcome
to reality,” I whispered to it. I tightened my hands, limbering my fingers
above the glowing displays.

Miya was staring, hypnotrzed. her face reflecting the empty
face of the Tau news report. She glanced up as I spoke, and I realized she
thought the words had been meant for her.