Dreamfall (45 page)

Daeh and Remu appeared in my line of sight, gaping at us.
Daeh swore out loud. “They’re coming!” he shouted. “What are you doing? They’re
coming!”

Miya stiffened. (Humans—?)

“corpsec?” I said, my words tangling in her thoughts. But we
didn’t need to ask. Miya held me closer and teleported us away.

We were back with Naoh and the others. Daeh and Remu followed
us by seconds.

Naoh was waiting for us as we appeared. As she saw us she
froze. I didn’t understand why until I realized, that we were still holding
each other, still only a few breaths away from a kiss, our bodies, our faces,
betraying our hunger for each other even here, now, in the middle of a war
zone.

I let go of Miya. She let go of me, her face flushing.

(We sent the message, Naoh—) Miya’s senses were still so
heightened that I could feel every nerve ending in her body. I wondered whether
I was the only one or whether everyone in the room could feel our every finger
and toe, our beating hearts. (Naoh, wo entered the Humans’ comm web .... ft was
like the dreams of the an lirr. The starport is aware! We can go back—)

I reached out== pulled my hand back uncertainly, wanting to
stop her before she told the others too much. She’d kept her psi link open to
me; kept her promise. But she still trusted these people too much, way more
than I did.

The others looked up as the images registered, their weary
grief-stricken faces coming alive. As comprehension and then hope began to show
in their eyes, it was even hard for me not to believe she’d made the right
choice.

I crossed the room to where Joby was sitting, his small face
empty, like he was barely aware of what was going on around him. The other
Satoh might watch over him while Miya was away, but they weren’t doing more
than they had to, to help him. Or maybe they simply didn’t know how.

“Joby,” I said softly. I crouched down, holding out my arms
to him: doing it because I hoped that would distract Miya before she said too
much, doing it because I couldn’t stand the emptiness in his eyes.

Miya glanced at us. I felt her thoughts reach out and weave
into his mind, ordering and augmenting his senses. The next second she was
standing beside me, taking Joby into her own arns.

As I looked up Naoh was watching the three of us together,
the way she’d watched the two of us before. I looked away as our eyes met. So
did she.

All at once the other Satoh turned like one person, looking
toward the empty center of the room. My eyes followed them like an
afterthought. Three more figures were standing there, So suddenly that I wasn’t
sure whether everyone else had turned to look at them before they arrived or
after.

The first of the new arrivals was Hanjen. The second was one
of the Satoh. They supported the third one between them: Grandmother. Her
clothing was torn and bloody; her face was a mass of bruises.

I’d crossed the room on foot before anyone else had even reacted.
It was like they’d been paralyzed by the sight of her, or stunned by her pain.
I shoved the stranger aside and helped Han-jen move her to where we could ease
her down onto a makeshift bed of piled rugs.

Miya was beside me suddenly, with Joby still in her arms. I
took him from her as she offered Grandmother a cup of water she’d conjured from
somewhere. She helped Grandmother drink, gently wiped blood from the oyasin’s
face and hands.

Wherever Grandmother’s flesh showed through her ruined
clothing, the skin was bruised or broken. I even thought I saw burns. I looked
away, sickened, before I had to be sure.

“Stay back!” Miya said fiercely as the others began to come
closer. They backed off. Helpless ruge bled from her thoughts into mine,
staining my vision crimson; but she never looked away from Grandmother, not
flinching from the damage as she did what she could to ease it.

I felt her mind shift into a nonverbal mode I could barely access.
She passed her hands over Grandmother’s body as if they held a medical scanner.
Her concentration flickered, her face contorted with pain as she paused over
the worst of the injuries.

I felt her do something then with her psi that I had no
words to describe. It was healing of a kind I’d never seen, So that I wasn’t
even sure whether she was trying to mend torn tissue or only ease the pain. All
I was sure of was the pain it cost Miya for each bit of the oyasin’s pain she
took away. I kept my mind open, letting as much of the pain pass through her
into me as she’d allow. Joby whimpered, as if no one had enough control to
protect him completely. I held him closer, biting my lip.

The others gathered around us, watching. I felt their eyes
glance off me, again and again; but whatever their thoughts were, they kept
them hidden.

“What happened?” Naoh demanded, looking at Hanjen.

He shook his head, his face grey, like he was sharing Grandmother’s
pain along with us. “She appeared, in my home. They did this, to an oyasin—!”
His voice shook.

“Did she escape from them?” Naoh asked.

“I doubt tt,” I said, remembering what they’d done to me. “They
must have let her go.” I leaned forward beside her. “Grandmother,” I said
softly. “Why did they do this to you? Did they tell you?”

She nodded, struggling to raise her head; Miya held her, supporting
her. Miya’s presence in my mind cut off suddenly, leaving me alone in silence.
I sucked in a breath, caught by surprise. Miya glanced at me as she wiped her
face on her sleeve, wiping away sweat or tears. The look told me the oyasin was
taking all her strength, all the healing support she had now. And then her eyes
were back on Grandmother.

“Oyasin,” I murmured. “Did they send you back with a message?
Why did they send you back like this?”

“Bian!” Miya said querulously, like I was acting too Human.

But Grandmother lifted her hand, a barely visible motion. “No
.... Bian is right. It is important ....” Her eyes were a deeper green than I
remembered, without a veil to conceal them. She shook her head slightly. ‘Ah,
Bian. I told you that you shouldn’t comg ....”

But I wasn’t hurt.
I froze, realtzing that it wasn’t
over yet. My throat constricted as I whispered, “I had to. You know I had to.”

She nodded slightly, her eyes filled with depths of sotrow. “The
one who hates us all ...,”

“Borosage?” I asked.

She nodded again. “He said that I must tell you this: He has
taken so many of oui people. They will be freed only ...”

“If we give back the boy?” Naoh finished it, her voice
poisoned with hatred.

“No,” Hanjen said, intemrpting for the first time. “That is
no longer enough. He wants all of the Satoh to surrender ... or the ones they
took will not be released, and there will be more reprisals.”

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered in Standard. Everyone looked at
me. I wished I hadn’t reminded them or myself again that I was half Human.

“And is that why you came here, Hanjen?” Naoh demanded. “Have
you brought drugs and binders to make us sulrender?” The others around her
stirred restlessly, frowning.

Hanjen frowned too. “You know it isn’t. My mind is open to you:
see it, feel it. I am no friend of the Humans. I will never forgive what they
did today! Even if you were nsf—” He broke off.

I felt the sudden pang of Miya’s shame. My mind filled with
blurry memories of Hanjen, of all he’d meant to her, to Naoh, once; of all they’d
once meant to him.

“But I will never forgive you, either, Naoh,” Hanjen whispered.
His fists knotted at his sides as he looked around the room. ‘Any of you. I
only came here because the oyasin asked it. I am taking her to the hospital
now. I hope all of you will pray that our ‘superior’ minds and inferior medical
technology can save her from what the Humans have done to her.” For the first
time, the word “Humans” sounded like a curse from his lips. “You claimed all
along that you wanted to help our people: I leave it up to you whether you
surrender to the Humans or bring even more suffering and grief down on us all.”
He kneeled down beside Grandmother.

Let me help you
—I almost said it out loud, before I
realized that there was nothing at all I could do. The same impulse filled Miya’s
mind; I wasn’t even sure whose idea it had been first. But then she remembered
Joby—that his safety depended on her. She glanced at the other Satoh in the
room, all of them her friends, her comrades. This time she looked at them like
they were strangers.

She looked back at Grandmother lying in Hanjen’s arrns.
Grandmother’s body spasmed suddenly, and Hanjen paled. A wave of sickening
grief crested over Miya’s defenses and rolled through me. Joby began to wail.
And then all at once the perfiect clarity of Grandmother’s vision touched us
all—even me—one last time, in a blessing and an absolution. And then she was
gone.

Her body lay in Hanjen’s arrns, the green eyes staring like
she’d been caught in a moment of awe. A raw noise of grief filled his throat.
His arms constricted, holding her close. He rocked her lifeless body slowly,
making no sound now, but with a look on his face that I felt to my bones.
Everyone around me wore the same look of devastation, even Naoh. Miya sank to
her knees beside him, clinging to his leg. Her choking sobs shook my body.

I reached out to close Grandmother’s eyes, touching her as
gently as my unsteady hand could manage, with her sightless gaze looking
through me at something beyond. No one moved to stop me. No one moved at all.

DKEAMF’ALL / 501

I took my hand away as Hanjen got to his feet. He lifted the
oyasin’s broken body as easily as if it weighed nothing, now that her soul had
left it. “Never,” he repeated, his stare including us all. “I will never
forgive you.” (Never—) Holding Grandmother in his arrns, he gathered in his
thoughts like torn netting and teleported.

The sigh of air as he disappeared was like the sorrow of the
breathing universe. Naoh stared at the emptiness where they’d been seconds
before. Her face was as desolate as Death’s.

The others were asking questions now, out loud and silently;
my ears heard them. Miya’s mind registered them as she struggled to pull her
thoughts back together.

“
What will we do?
”

(The oyasin, she’s
—)

“
No, we can’t ..
..”

“
The Humans, it’s all the Humans’fault!
”

(What will we do now
—
?)

Death. Death all around me ..
.. I held on to Miya,
barely aware that she was holding on to me now, only aware of
death,
emptiness
....

Naoh’s gaze settled on Joby, cradled between us, still
sobbing.

Miya looked up suddenly. The anguish inside her spiraled out
of control as the holocaust of Naoh’s need for
justice/vengeance
blistered
our senses. All the minds around us went up like tinder; I felt their emotions
burn through each other’s defenses until they were all one mind, and it was
blind to reason.

I wrenched my mind free of the maddening input that poured
through my psi link with Miya.
(Joby!)
I thought, shouting against the
firestorm. Joby was all that mattered: protecting him, finding a way to get him
to safety ....

“We will not surender,” Naoh said, her voice dripping blood.
“I would rather be dead! Let the rest of the Community decide for themselves
whether they fight to live—or die for no reason.” There was no doubt anywhere
in her mind, in any mind around us. “Miya, you have to show us now how to
access the Humans’ computgrs ....”

Miya bent her head, her resolve softening like candle wax in
the heat of their shared fury.

“Naoh,” I said desperately. “We’ve sent a message off-world.
We’ll be getting help soon. We could leave town, hide out deep in the Homeland;
or we could stall them some other way—lie, fake our own deaths, anything just
to stay alive until 1fuep—”

“No Humans will ever negotiate for us, listen to us, or help
us, even if everything you claim is true, Bian,” she said. Her voice was flat,
without the rage I’d heard in it before, but her eyes hadn’t changed. “We are
not afraid to die. They can’t break us with fear. But we would rather live, to
lead our people’s rebirth .... And you’ve given us another Way, just as you
promised. We will destroy the Humans with their own technology, before they can
use it against us again.”

Something turned cold inside me. “Teaching you to interact
with their datanet will take a lot of time, which we haven’t got—and a private
port, which we haven’t got either, now that Hanjen’s cut us off. And I don’t
see any other way—”

“You ate the Way.” She pointed a finger at me. “I know you’re
lying to us now because you’re afraid to share your secrets—you can’t hide what
Miya knows from me.”

I looked at Miya; she looked away helplessly.

“But even if it’s true that we can’t learn their technology
and how to use it in time, even your lies prove you are the one who can help us
survive until we can learn how. Only you are someone who can do it for us.”

“What?” I said, already sure that I wasn’t going to like the
answer. “What do you mean?”

“Hurt them. Hurt them like they hurt you, us, all our people
.... They tortured the oyasin and sent her to us to die, because they think we’re
cowards! We have the boy. We’ll send him back to them the same way. Then they’ll
know that they should fear ss—”

“Naoh!” Miya said thickly, “you swore we wouldn’t hurt Joby!”
Joby began to cry again, frightened by emotions neither one of them could
control. She rocked him, hushing him, wiping away his tears.

“And we won’t.” Naoh looked at me. “Let Bian do it,” she
said, like she was telling me to wipe his nose.

“Bian is one of us!” Miya said.

“Of course he is.” Naoh shrugged. “But he can lie like a Human;
he can even kill like a Human. He has killed and survived. He’s different. That’s
why we found him. He can do this easily.”