Dreamfall (49 page)

Miya walked beside me, our bodies touching; I felt her keeping
track of Joby’s pace and mine. There were doorways along the corridor. Most of
their ancient, metal-bossed doors stood open, revealing small unadorned rooms
that reminded me of Grandmother.

I shied from her memory looking straight ahead as Miya led
us into another large chamber. ft was echoingly empty, like all the rest had
been. At its far end I saw a balcony opening on more reaches of sky.

It occurred to me then to be surprised I wasn’t colder,
because I knew how cold it had been outside. As we stepped onto the balcony I
felt the soft whisper of some kind of energy field and realized that somewhere
here was centuries-old Hydran technology that still functioned, without the
input of Miya or anyone else.

And then I forgot even that as I reached the featureless
wall at the balcony’s edge. The sanctuary sat on a ledge halfway up the nearly
sheer wall of a cliff in the same untouched reef the research team had come to
study. I looked out and down, up aga1n, before the river-eaten depths below me
had time to really register. The walls of the monastery flowed into the
mountain wall above us; the incredible landscape of the eroded reef matrix lay
all around us. I sucked in a breath, inhaling beauty, even as I searched the
horizon for Tau Rivertor, for anything from the world we’d left behind.

(We’re two hundred kilometers from Riverton,) Miya thought.
(Deep in the Homeland. The Humans never come out this far; even our own people
have almost abandoned the interior, since there ate so few of us now ... since
the an lirr abandoned us.)

I took another deep breath; let it out in a sigh. At the
limits of my sight the reefs finally ended, their surreal topography flowing
out onto a barren Plain.

I let my gaze drop again and saw a bridge spanning the
ravine. Below the monastery there was a narrow footpath worn into the sheer
slope of the cliffside. I remembered Hanjen walking out from Freaktown to his
meeting with Grandmother. I wondered whether Hydrans had once made pilgrimages
all the way to this place on foot.

(I don’t knoW) Miya answered. (I only know that visitors approached
the shue on foot if they were able to walk. And they left on foot when they
were healed.)

Joby hung on the balcony wall, doing his best to imitate the
high skreeling of the taku that sailed in and out above our heads. I watched
him watching them, watched him laugh and move in ways that I’d taken for
granted all my life. I felt sourceless wonder fill me again. (What’s happened
to us here ... does it last? If we leave this place, do we ... change back?)

She looked down, and I didn’t really need an answer. I swore
softly under my breath. She touched my artn, anchoring me in the present. (Some
of it lasts,) she thought gently. (The longer we can stay, the more the changes
will imprint. Your mind is free here; you’re free to heal your mind the way you’ve
healed your body, if—)

(If—?) I thought, when she didn’t go on.

(If you have enough faith.)

(Faith?) I thought. The only thing I believed in was rhe
cosmic rule that said if anything could go wrong, it would. (It’s against my
religion.) I glanced away, ffiy mouth twisting.

(Faith in yourself is all the faith you need.) As I turned
back, she looked in through my eyes like I’d suddenly become transparent. (You’ve
never trusted yourself the way you’ve trusted me ....) Her mind filled with a
kind of wonder.

(What about Joby?) I glanced at him, suddenly needing an excuse
to look away.

I felt her surprise turn to a pang of disappointment.
(Freedom to heal is what I wanted this place to give him too,) she said evenly.
But her thoughts had shifted, withdrawing. I felt seeds of panic sprout inside
me as the fear of losing her, and losing my psi again, made my control slip as
my mind huddled down into the dark place where there was no pain, no
betrayal—nothing left to lose.

Miya kept her eyes on Joby, but I felt the effort it cost
her to let me retreat without following. (He wants this so much ....) She went
on like I couldn’t sense her strain, like I didn’t know that she knew exactly
what was going on inside me. (But for him it’s a matter of patterning,
imprinting. How well the patterning will last depends on how long he can stay
here—
Jobyl)
Her mind called out suddenly, sharply, as he scrambled up
the rough wall of the balcony to teeter near its top, reaching up. He swayed,
startled, even as she disappeared from beside me with a thought, reappeared
beside him, holding out her arms as he toppled back into them. (Go slowly, my
heart!) she thought, rocking him gently, kissing the top of his head. He
squirmed, but he didn’t try to escape.

I wondered what Joby’s parents would think if they could see
hi* now ... \ryondered what they were thinking right now. I rested against the
cold stone beside the doorway, trying to forget my own mind and its problems,
as a wave of dizziness warned me I was pushing my body too hard.

Miya glanced at me. She let Joby go again. A cold gust of
wind whipped her hair across her face; she brushed it away like tears as Joby
moved uncertainly toward me and caught at my anns.

I held on to him, barely, swallowing a grunt of pain as the
collision with his body seerned to jar every half-healed bone and ligament in
my owrl.

Joby sucked in his breath like he was the one in pain as I
let him go, settling him on his feet.

(Catl) he cried, hanging on my pants leg. (You hurt! You
hurt—?)

“No, it’s all ri—” I broke off, staring down at him. I
looked up at Miya, back at Joby again. “What ... what did you say?” (What did
he say? Miya—?)

“It’s okay?” Joby repeated, pulling at the ruins of my coat.

I kneeled down beside him, nodding, stroking his hair as I
looked into his eyes—wide brown eyes with perfectly round Human pupils. (It’s okay.
I’m okay.) I watched his face ease.
He was reading my thoughts ..
.. I
hadn’t just imagined before that his mind seemed as open to me as Miya’s. I sat
down, because it was easier, and he sat down beside me, mimicking my every
move. Miya crossed the balcony to us, limned by brightness. (What’s going on?)
I asked. (You can’t tell me the reefs made him a telepath—)

(Yes, I can,) she said quietly. (But not yesterday. Before
he was born.)

I stared at her. (You’re saying—the accident, when his
mother ... that changed him?)

She nodded.

(That’s im—) I broke off as another taku sailed over my
head, and Joby pulled himself up to follow it. (Do his parents know? Does
anyone?)

She shook her head. (I was afraid to tell them.) She gazed
out across the reefs. (I didn’t know what they’d do ... what Tau would do.)

I grimaced. If Tau knew something in the reefs could do that
to a Human fetus—accidentally or otherwise—who knew how they’d react: whether
they’d try to synthesize and exploit whatever had played shuffle-brain with
Joby’s mind or whether they’d want to destroy all evidence of something they
might see as a threat that could panic their entire population. Either way, I
didn’t see it meaning anything but grief for Joby. (Is his being a psion what
lets you work with him like you did?)

She shook her head, squatting down beside me, out of the
wind. Her eyes tracked Joby wherever he went. (Sometimes it makes it harder. He
can resist me, resist himself, without meaning to, in ways he’s too young to
understand. But if he can learn to control his Gift, it will rnake learning to
use his body that much easier. He could have a normal life ....)

“Then you’d better teach him how to hide his psi too ....” I
said out loud. I dropped back into telepathic speech, without being able to
lose the bitterness, (If you really want him to have a nonnal life in a combine
world.)

She looked at me, her gaze both sharp and full of sympathy.
She glanced away again.

“Hungry,” Joby announced, coming back to plop down between
uS. “Momffiy, hungry—” He pointed at his stomach.

Miya’s face flickered, showing him a smile that wasn’t in
her thoughts. “Come or, then.” She picked up a pot that sat stonelike in the
shadows against the wall. I realized there were other bags and containers lined
up on the balcony, bulging with supplies. Miya took Joby’s hand. She glanced
back at me, waiting while I got my own feet under me.

“Where did you get the food?” I asked.

“In town.”

“How?”

“I had some money put away.”

“You accessed your credit line?” I said, incredulous. “They’ll
ttace 5log—”

She held up her bare wrist, a silent rebuttal. “Markers. I’ve
been careful,” she murrnured, leading us back through the monastery. We
followed a curving, timeworn tunnel to a lower level of the building, to what
must have been its kitchen once. She set the pot down on the surface of
something I didn’t recognize as a cook unit until a hinged metal door opened
silently in its side.

“Me!” Joby said. “I do it!”

“No,” Miya answered, like she’d said it too many times
before. “Too hard. When you’re older.” She reached in through the opening, palm
out, interacting with a technology far older than the force screen we’d just
left behind us, but in a piece of hardware that looked much newer. I felt her
begin to gather energy, drawing it in, focusing it, directing it, her face
clenched with strain.

The air around us seemed to grow colder as I waited,
watching like Joby did, both of us as still as if we were hypnotized. Finally
there was a sharp
crack
and a blaze of lightlheat from inside the stove’s
belly. Miya jerked her hand back, slamming the grate, breathing hard. She wiped
her forehead with a soot-covered hand, wiping away sweat, leaving a black
smear. (It rnust get easier with practice,) she thought ruefully==I wiped the
smear of ash gently from her face and took her blackened hand in mind. Her hand
was ice-cold; she shivered, standing close to the heat the stove was beginning
to put out, like lighting it had drained her own body heat.

“What about your sister?” I asked, finally, as her hands warmed
and color came back into her face. “Did you see her in town?”

She looked up at me. (No ...) she whispered, her reluctance
almost suffocating the word. There was fear inside her, but not fear of Naoh. I
realized suddenly that she was afraid of learning what had happened to me, what
Naoh had done after she’d taken Joby away ... after she’d abandoned lre, again.
Because she knew how it had ended.

(Don’t,) I thought. (Don’t blame yourself. You made the
right choice.)

(What did she do?) she asked at last, blinking too much==(She
... they ...) Suddenly I was floundering out of my depth in
rage/disgust/humiliation.
They’d done to me exactly what Humans had alwaYs done.

“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I don’t remember. They just dumped me
in the middle of nowhere.”

“Bian.” Miya caught at my afin; I moved out of reach.

“Hungry—” Joby began to chant impatiently, trying to drown
out emotions he sensed but couldn’t understand. “Hungry. Hungry, hungry—”

Miya hushed him with a distracted thought, sent him away to
fetch bowls. “Cat.” She used my Human name== more hesitantly, when I didn’t
answer. “Tell me.” Her hand closed over my arm this time, tightened, not
letting me go.

My own hand closed over Wauno’s medicine pouch. Her glance
went to it; I saw her incomprehension. Looking down, I forced myself to open my
mind, setting free the memories of how Naoh had used me to get what she wanted.

I felt Miya’s mind pull apart the nested layers of Naoh’s revenge
until she found its heart: the betrayal that Naoh felt every time she looked at
us and looked into my eyes. Hydran eyes in a too-Human face, in a too-Human
body that was helpless against her ....

Miya lost control, slipped and fell through my memories into
her own:
Memories of the things that Naoh had done, the choices she ‘d made,
because of Navt,t ... of Hydrans and Humans, love and hate, nasheirtah, and
namaste
—

(What about Naoh and Navu?) I demanded. (What about them—?)

Miya cried out; or maybe it was only what happened in my
head then that blistered my reeling thoughts.

I broke free, swearing, and left the room. I blundered
through the darkened halls of the empty monastery until my body couldn’t go on.
It gave out, finally, tt the entrance to a room with no windows, no skylights,
only that single opening, so low that I hit my head on it, swearing again as I
entered. I sat down with my back against a wall and covered my face with my
hands.
It was impossible
—to live the way I’d lived, to have been Human
for so long, and not have secrets you never wanted to see the light of day==
Impossible
to share everything—even
if it meant losing everything. I wondered whether
it was really possible for anyone, even the Hydrans ....

I sat in the dark for a long time with all my senses on
hold, letting need and futility play their circle game until they drained the
last of my strength.

And then someone touched my shoulder. I looked up, expecting
Miya—found Joby staring back at me with something like awe. His grinning face
glowed with colored light. The abstract patterns shifted as he craned his neck
to peer past me. “Look!” he said, pointing. “Look what you made.”

I looked over my shoulder, realiztng that the room wasn’t
dark anymore; it was filled with eerie luminescence. My breath caught as I saw
the wall behind me—the multicolored imprint of my body shining in the dark,
neon colors bleeding outward from the contact point. “Damn ...” r whispered, in
disbelief.

Joby pressed his hands against the wall. Glowing handprints
set off colors that spread in all directions from his touch. He pressed

DKEAMF’ALL / 529

his whole body against the wall, giggling as he flung his
anns wide, flattening his nose as he set off more luminescence, sending his
colors rippling outward until they collided with my own.