Dreamfall (46 page)

“Easily?” I said, starting to tremble. “You think it was
easy for me to kill somebody, even in self-defense? It cost me my Gift! I might
as well have died. What the hell do you think I really am? If you even think I’d
ever touch fuip—” I felt Miya inside my head, her psi manifesting in a way I
didn’t understand; until suddenly I realized that she was trying to
teleport—trying to focus Joby’s mind clearly enough to caffy him with her and
still find the strength to take me too. (Go!) I thought frantically. (Get him
out. Just get him out—)

“Naoh,” I said, groping for any coherent thought, any distraction
to give Miya the time she needed. “Hurting Joby won’t stop Tau. It only makes
us like them. It means they’ve already destroyed us. The Humans see us as less
than ... than lirr.” The Human lexicon in my brain translated the word for “sentient
being” as “Human.” “If we—” I felt the soft breath of air behind me that told
me Miya and Joby were gone.

“Miya!” Naoh cried. Her face went white with fury. “You sent
her &way—?” she said to me, half a questior, half a demand.

“No,” I said. “You did.” I held her gaze until at last she
looked down.

She looked up at me again, finally, and I felt every green,
long-pupiled eye in the room fixed on me, like all their minds held the same
thought—and the thought was always hers. “You claim you still believe in our
cause?”

I nodded, wondering what kind of choice she thought I had.
Miya was gone, and I was helpless without her, lost in the wasteland that
suffounded my mind.

“So you refuse to be a terrorist, like the Humans? But you
said if the Human pacifist Gandhi had faced Tau, he would have been killed.
Where does that leave us?” she demanded. “What is the answet?”

This time I looked down and shook my head.

“You say we only have to stay alive until your message
brings help. Even if that was true, Tau would never let them see the truth. The
Humans will attack the Community and destroy it first. The only way any of our
people will survive is by making the Humans afraid of us. By striking back!”
She waved her hand at my face.

I swore under my breath, because I couldn’t even convince myself
that she was wrong and I was right.
Damned tf you do, damned if you don’r
—

“You know almost as much about Riverton as Miya does. You
can go therc,” Naoh said suddenly, and I couldn’t tell where her thoughts were
now.

“How?” I snapped, not even wanting to know why. “I can’t
teleport.”

“We can send you. Miya did it.”

“Miya’s the only one who can get deep enough into my 6lnd—”

“It can be arranged,” she said flatly.

I frowned. “I told you, I won’t do anything to hurt
innocenf—”

“There are no ‘innocent’ Humans! They have no real emotions—even
a taku has more real feelings than a Human does. You used to know that. You
knew what it meant to have the Gift. Don’t you feel less alive, less whole,
without it? Don’t you blame thsrn—J”

“Yes.” I looked down again. “Every second of every day.”

“You
are
less,” she said softly, “but only because
the Humans crippled you.”

“They can never be anything more,” Remu said.

“They’re inferior, not us,” someone else said.

“TheY’re aniP4lS—”

“That’s why they can do the things they have always done to
us.’t

“Now you have your chance to pay them back,” Naoh said, “and
save your real people, the ones who care about you. Your nasheirtah ....”

I kept my expression empty, telling myself they couldn’t
reach into my thoughts without my sensing it. But beyond that I was defenseless;
without Miya I had no way to escape, oo one to turn to. “What ... what do you
want to do?” I muftered, not quite looking at her. “I was in their jail, but I
don’t remember much ....”

Naoh shook her head. “‘we’re always drugged when they take
us in. No one has ever managed to get a clear sense of it. We cannot send you
there.”

I began to remernber all the places I’d been when I hadn’t
been drugged. I imagined the kinds of damage I could do with a wad of explosive
the size of a skagweed cud stuck on the underside of a chair. I couldn’t think
of a single place I’d been that wouldn’t make a perfect target for a terrorist
attack .... I could plant half a dozen patch bombs inside of an hour, easy. I
wiped my hands on my pants legs.

“The research team,” Naoh said.

“What?”

“The research team. The ones you came here with. You told us
you only came with them so that you could find your mother’s people. Their
leader is Janos Perrymeade’s niece. That coward Perrymeade has betrayed us over
and over. If we can’t use the child, then we’ll use his niece, and those
off-worlders Tau brought here to desecrate our last holy place.”

My mind emptied like a broken cup.

“You can go back to them, Bian. They know you. perrymeade’s
niece wants you back. Miya showed me what she saw in your mind—how that woman
tried to seduce you, how she only wants to have sex with you because you’re a
half-breed.”

I felt my face turn red. That wasn’t how I remembered it. I
didn’t believe that was how Miya saw it, either.

“The memory of her was all pain. She hurt 5los—”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I said, realizing that Naoh’s mind
had twisted the images Miya shared with her the way it twisted everything else
she knew about Humans.

“The Humans use you, and still you blame yourself?” she said
fiercely. “Miya abandoned you—all of us—because of her sickening obsession with
that Human child. If you want to be free, then free yourself!” She raised her
fist: a crate spun off a stack behind me and exploded in midair. I covered my
head, swearing, as it rained purple-red fragments of rotten fruit like bits of
internal organs. ‘Act, for all of us. We all want to punish the Humans for the
oyasin’s death ... but only you are strong enough to do it.” She moved toward
me slowly, until she was pressed up against me, with her hands on my chest. “Show
the Humans your strength. Go back to your teammates and take your revenge on
them ....”

I backed away, breaking the physical contact between us, the
insidious mental link I’d felt tendriling its way into my mind. I couldn’t tell
if she was trying to influence me consciously or only instinctively. But either
way, she’d been trying. And it had been working.

“I said
no,
”
almost shouting it this time. My
eyes raked the room. “I’m not some walking dead man you can use for your dirty
work, because I’m not really Hydran, just a mebtaku ....”

I wondered suddenly if that was how they’d always thought
about me ... all of them except Miya. Because I’d never be able to tell.

I turned my back on Naoh and started for the door at the far
end of the warehouse. My footsteps echoed like shouts in the cavernous space.

The others stood watching me pass, two dozen sets of eyes
tracking me like one. And then, like an extension of Naoh’s own body, they
moved in to block my path.

“Where are you going, Bian?” Naoh asked as the wall of bodies
forced me to stop moving.

I glanced around the circle of glazed, desperate faces. “I’m
going to find Miya.”

“No,” Naoh said. “If Miya brings the boy back, she is still
one of us. ff she doesn’t, she is a traitor. And if you leave us now, so ate
you.”

“That’s not the only choice,” I insisted, trying to keep my
voice steady. “It’s not the only answer.”

“Mebtaku ...” Naoh muttered. No one moved out of my path.

I frowned. “Then I guess I have to do this the hard wa,;y,”
I said. “The Human way.” I sucker-punched Tiene, who was standing directly in
front of me, and shoved him aside into Remu. Two of the others grabbed for my arms;
a broken finger and an elbow in the ribs got them off me. They weren’t used to
fighting somebody whose every move was completely unreadable; maybe they weren’t
used to fighting hand-to-hand at all—

Or maybe they were. The rest came after me as I bolted for
the door; just enough of them teleported ahead of me to reach it first. They
couldn’t use their psi to attack me; my defenses were too strong. But they didn’t
need to, when they still had hands and feet like any Human.

As their blows beat me down to my knees, I wondered whether my
own mind’s defenses kept them from feeling my pain. But pain showed in every
contorted face: I saw tears runneling filthy cheeks, heard gasps that weren’t
mine as they hit and kicked me—doing it the Human way.

Or maybe feeling the pain was the point, the only way they
could purge their own guilt about the butchery of innocents they’d caused
today, and their own survival: the pain they felt, and the pain they laid on
me, crushing me under their rage against everything Human. Pulling my knees in,
covering my face, I tried to protect my body, but there was no escape from
their pain ....

Until finally something crashed down on me out of nowhere,
and blindsided me into blackness.

(Help me ...) I wanted to wake up, kept trying to wake up—somehow
sure this had to be a dream. There was no way I could actually be here like
this, sprawled back in a seat in Wauno’s transport with Kissindre Perrymeade on
top of me, her mouth and hands doing things to my body that I’d only ever
dreamed about ....

There was no way my body could be answering her, willingly
and completely, when the way she touched me felt more like pain, even though I
knew it was impossible for me to feel that kind of pleasure eeling its way out
from the inside. Our being lovers had been over before it started, because the
same thing would always have kept happening: nothing.

And because now there was Miya.

But Miya was gone ... she’d left me behind. I gasped as the
echo of a woman’s sudden cascading pleasure sent shockwaves up my spine from
between my legs, higher with every heartbeat until I was barely aware of the
space around me,
seats, floor hull ... control panel.

In my dream, hungry succubi were feeding on my hunger,
sucking my mind dry, looking out through my eyes to identify components and
functions; realtzing just how intricate, how vulnerable, the system was to
someone who could alter circuitry with a thought: just like a Human body.
Whispering that just disrupting the fragile processes inside a single microcomponent
would start a chain reaction of errors that would build and build. the way my
need was building.

Now, while my pleasure was still climbing ... it would be simple
.... No one would ever suspect that one flicker of a kind of psi energy I’d
never even had outside of a dream had set the countdown to disaster ticking. Or
when, like the agony of pleasure peaking now inside me, it would explode ....

(No—!)

I woke up, blinking splinters of dream out of my eyes, and
saw a woman’s wet, open mouth centimeters from my own. I felt the weight of her
body still pressing me down against the seat, the excruciating throb of my
erection trapped between us. I tried to get up, get her off me; my hands were
tied behind the seatback. Pain everywhere made me swear as I struggled against
the bindings.

The woman’s body pressing up against mine shifted position,
shifted again, knowingly, and mylher/my
pleasure*pain*pleasure
lasered
through my nerve lines to my brain. I tried to separate signal from noise; my
mind was too clogged with stimuli for me to tell if there was any difference.
Dismembered fragments of my past rose from unmarked graves, feeding my darkest
needs, my deepest fears ....

(What the hell is happening to me—?)

The body using mine shifted again, sliding back until I
could see a face at last. Naoh was straddling the chair, her lips hovering in
front of my mouth. She leaned forward and pressed her wet, open mouth over mine
again, probing with her tongue. My body kissed her back, straining against the
bonds like an animal, despente to do her the way she was doing me, outside,
inside, everywhere, making
pain*pleasure
strobe through my brain and
body until I was crazy with the need to set free the urge trapped inside me,
overloading every circuit until I wanted to scream, to beg, to do anything that
would make her let me—

“Do it,” she whispered. “Do it and I’ll set you free.”

“Yes,” I groaned. “Please, let me ...”

Something let go inside my brain like the latch spring on a
ffap, and something happened—something far away, something I never meant to
happen, allow, do ... change. As it let go I fell, not into the core of my
burning need, but back into the world.

Naoh was standing over me, still straddling the chair. Still
inside my mind, controlling everything I thought and felt. Mind-fucking me. I
rolled my eyes, looking away from her. The other Satoh ringed us in, their
haunted eyes riveted on me, their minds hand in hand, giving her will the
strength of two dozen more.

I twisted my face away. “Why—?” I gasped.

Naoh wiped her hand across her mouth. (Because I wanted to
know what it was that could make a half-breed like you my sister’s nasheirtah
... what it was she found so irresistible about the enemy ... why you would do
anything she asked.) She backed away, her eyes never leaving my face, and even
though she was no longer touching me,
she was
—Invisible hands still
crawled over my body, sliding down my belly, fondling me, exploring me in ways
that made me want to scre&ffi, but not with pain.

“I’m not the enemy, damn you!” I mumbled. “Stop i1—” But
even as I begged her to stop, I could feel her experiencing everything I
thought—and felt. She knew as well as I did that some perverse part of me had
begged her to finish what she’d started .... And she had ... I had ... God,
what was it I
had
done ... ?

Suddenly, she was gone. It was all gone: the invisible
violation, the multiple psi link lighting up my mind like a thousand flares.
Without warning, I was empty, abandoned, alone in the dark. I whimpered, and
she smiled.