Dreamfall (53 page)

(Cat ....) Whatever else she’d tried to tell me reached me
as pure emotion. Our telepathic link shattered as my body banged into a hatch
opening. They hauled me on board the flyer. Natasa was there already, with Joby
on his knee. Joby sat with his arms wrapped around a bright-colored stuffed toy.
He looked up like he sensed me before he saw me, and then his eyes glazed; I
felt Miya reach through me to touch his thoughts one last time.

“Mommy—?” he cried, searching the air. Natasa caught his
hands and pulled them down, half frowning. And then she was gone, and no one
else was left who understood but me.

I felt her inside me again, the contact so full of anguish
that it wrenched my heart out through my eyes. My concentration fell apatt
completely, until I couldn’t find her at all. Joby began to wail again. I felt
his fright and incomprehension as the guards shoved me into a seat and locked
me into it.

(Don’t cry, Joby ....) Somehow I managed to pull myself together
long enough to make him believe everything was happening the way it should.
(You’re going home,) I thought, finally understanding how Miya had fo.und the
strength to protect him, burying her fears for both their sakes.

Joby settled down again in Natasa’s lap, clutching the toy,
but his tear-reddened eyes stayed on me. Natasa’s did too. He glared at me, at
the guards around me, at Fahd and Perrymeade who’d come on board behind me. He
was wondering why the hell they had to put me in the same craft with him and
his son, thinking that Fahd was a bastard and Perrymeade was a fool.

He looked away again finally and began to talk to Joby in
low tones, trying to reassure him. I watched his face soften as relief and
wonder rose to the surface in his mind again.
His son was alive, unharmed
... his son was well.
Just for a moment, he was afraid he might break down
in front of everyone and weep. He glanced at me again, suddenly, and away.

I looked up, startled, as Perrymeade took the seat beside
me. “what the hell are you doing here—?” r muttered.

“Doing my job,” he said flatly, keeping his own gaze on
Joby. But in his mind he thought,
saving your lives.

Surprise caught me by the throat. I twisted in my seat. “If
you’d done your job right in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

His face closed. Looking at him I saw Kissindre in his
features, in his eyes, in his memories. He stood up without answering, before I
could ask him about her, and moved on down the aisle to sit with his
brother-in-law. I cursed my stupidity for saying that, for saying anything.

The squadron of flyers rose through a long arc up and over
the reefs, heading back toward Tau Riverton. I watched Joby with his father==
saw him beginning to respond to Natasa’s unguarded joy, felt him beginning to
remember that this man had always been a part of his life. The other Corpses
around them took off their helmets and gauntlets, one by one, to speak to the
father, smile and play with the son. They weren’t even all men; a few of them
were women.

Their congratulations, their concern, their pleasure, were
all genuine. A buzz of disorientation filled my head as I realized that the
same faceless killing machines that had cut down the Hydran demonstrators
actually held thinking, feeling minds, people who were friends of this man,
proud of their part in rescuing his son.

They barely glanced at me now. Locked in binderS, I wasn’t a
threat, and I wasn’t Human ... not even human. I’d stopped existing until we
reached our destination. Then they’d remember me. I wasn’t going to like it
when they did. I leaned back, too aware of the bruises stiffening my jaw;
trying to find the courage somewhere to help me face what was coming next.

Miya was safe.
At least I knew that. And Joby would
be taken care of by people who loved him. Tau hadn’t killed him after all. I
didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter as long as he was safe. What we’d
shared was over. I’d known it couldn’t last; I couldn’t even regret it.

I tried to focus on Joby, on the warm sea of comfort around
him; tried to imagine what it would have been like to have a father who’d come
searching for me and actually found me. But he hadn’t, and I couldn’t.

The clear, strong thread of psi energy linking me to Joby
frayed; the signal fragmented. I pulled my focus back together, thinking my own
emotions had distorted it. But as I did I realized there was something more: We
were leaving the monastery behind, passing beyond the influence of whatever
cast-off miracle lay in the deposits there. I remembered suddenly that it wasn’t
just Joby who was going to lose everything the reefs had given back to him.
So
was .

(Joby?)
I turned to watch his face, searching for a
sign,that this wasn’t really affecting him too. (Joby—?)

He looked up as I called his name mind-to-mind; for a moment
the look on his face was vacant and confused. I felt static break up his
thoughts as he tried to answer me; saw his body twitch spasmodically in his
father’s lap.

His father glanced down at him. I felt Natasa’s adrenaline
surge of panic, the numbing rush of denial as he tried to ignore what was
happening, as if to have even a moment’s doubt about his son’s condition might
change everything back to the way it had been. The way I’d warned him it would
be ....

I felt Natasa look up at me again. The unspoken demand in
his eyes speared my brain. I closed the fist of my thoughts and shut him out.

Joby flung out his hands with a wail of complaint, reaching
toward me. “Cat—” He called my name, and it was still intelligible.

I dropped my defenses, feeling his fear as he sensed
something going wrong inside us both: He was losing something precious, something
he didn’t even know the name of, something he hadn’t missed until we’d given it
to him. Something that even he knew was his birthright ....

And I knew exactly what he was feeling. I jerked against the
seat restraints, but with my hands locked behind me there was nothing I could
do to reach him. I sat back again and focused what mental control I had left,
forcing everyone and everything else out of my thoughts so that I could protect
him in the only way left to me, for as long as I could.

Joby settled into his father’s arrns again, quiet now, even
speaking a word or two when his father asked him something. Out of the corner
of my eye I saw Perrymeade watching—r, almost like he’d realized what I was
doing. His face furrowed; t couldn’t spare the concentration to find out why.
But he didn’t say anything, didn’t call some Corpse to slap a drugderm on me
and shut my psi down for good.

I took a deep breath, concentrating on my link to Joby, on being
there for him, keeping both of us calm as the strands of light strung across
the darkness between the outposts of our thoughts shorted out one by one. No
ability I had could reinforce the patterning of his neural circuitry to let him
go on functioning without massive external support. Nothing I could do would convince
my telepathy not to falter as the distance from the monastery grew, as the time
until we reached Tau Riverton shortened.

At last the perfect grid of Riverton showed below us, expanding
geometrically as we dropped toward our final destination: Corporate Security
headquarters.

Joby had been resting quietly against his father’s side, not
moving or making any sound, but still aware and functioning. He made a small
squawk as my eyes registered the building and I fed the unexpected shock of
recognition to him.

I looked away from the window, using all my physical senses
to help me stay fixed on him, needing all my self-control to keep my fear from
destroying the last fragile filament between us. The flyer landed inside
CorpSec’s compound. Natasa got up from his seat, setting Joby down on unsteady
legs, supporting him with gentle hands.

Someone’s hand closed hard over my shoulder. “He’s already
sweating, Lieutenant,” the Corpse said, releasing the seat restraints and
hauling me to my feet.

Fahd stopped in front of me and murmured, “You’ll be sweating
blood soon, freak.”

Joby made a mewling, helpless noise behind me. I turned back
in time to see him fall out of his father’s grasp as Fahd destroyed the last of
my control, and all his control went with it.

Natasa kneeled down to pick up the small, twitching body of
his son. He hugged Joby against his own annored body. “Joby!” he said. “Joby?”
He looked up at me again, his look demanding answers I couldn’t give to
questions he wouldn’t ask me.

(Joby—!) I shouted, into a silence that held no light at
all: no trace of his failing nerve net, no trace of any thought—no proof that
everyone around me hadn’t suddenly ceased to exist. Even Fahd, alien-eyed and
smirking in front of me, felt as dead as the ashes of my burned-out psi.

But as I looked back at him I realtzed that I was the dead
man, not him. He grinned, like he thought he was entirely responsible for the
look on my face then. He forced me around and out of the craft at gunpoint, not
letting me look back. I heard Natasa’s voice rising with urgency as he tried to
make his son respond. I heard the muffnured concern of other voices, voices
that had been full of wonder like his own when we left the monastery.

Perrymeade was beside me suddenly. Catching my attention across
a barrier of helmets, he called, “Joby—what’s happening to him? What did you
ds—?”

“I didn’t do anything to him!” I said fiercely. “I told
Natasa—Miya tried to tell you—it’s the place! The monastery. I warned him.”

Perrymeade dropped back out of my line of sight, probably reporting
what I’d said to Natasa. I caught sight of their small group heading away
diagonally across the field. Natasa was carrying Joby, but he moved like a man
who’d been knifed in the gut. I thought I saw someone waiting at the edge of
the field—figured it would be Joby’s mother, and whoever she’d brought along
for support. They were being held back by another squad of guards.

I looked over my shoulder for a last glimpse of Joby. I saw
Natasa pass him into his mother’s arrns, saw grief and joy mingle into one
impossible emotion, before their closing bodies blocked my line of sight. I
caught the sound of voices on the wind, but I couldn’t make out any words.
There was no sound from Joby; nothing at all in the silence of my empty mind.

Perrymeade was still looking toward me as the guards herded
me away into the detention center and the doors sealed behind us. I tried once
more to get a grip on my psi, but it was too late; everything I’d been had come
undone. My mind was as empty as deep space, drawing a blank on everyone we’d
left behind, everyone we passed. The Corpses moving through the station’s
bleak, inescapable halls might as well have been real corpses. I needed peace,
time, to find out whether the monastery had made any lasting difference in my
control. But my time was up.

Borosage was waiting for me in the windowless interrogation
room. I flinched, but I wasn’t surprised. He had the same prod in his hand and
the same smile on his face. “Well, freak,” he said, “here we are again. Let’s
just take up where we left 6ff—” He bent his head at the hard chair with the
straps that I’d come to in, the first time I’d opened my eyes in this place. “We
won’t be intemrpted this time, since you went so far out of your way to prove I
was right about you. I ought to thank you.”

“You brain-dead bag of pus,” I said in Hydran.

“Speak Standard, dammit, you little shit!”

“Eat me, Corpsa,” I said in Standard.

His face mottled. He flicked the prod on.

I lunged forward and knocked him down with a head butt. I
almost fell on top of him; barely caught my balance in time to run.

But the guards were on me before I got three steps, dragging
me back and around as Borosage staggered to his feet. He picked up the prod,
breathing hard. Fahd had his fingers knotted in my hair, an arm across my neck,
half choking me. Borosage ripped open my clothes, and drove the prod’s tip
against my naked chest until I screamed.

Fahd let me go, letting my head fall forward so that I could
breathe. I sucked in long, hoarse gasps of air; pain-tears leaked from the
corners of my eyes. I raised my head, finally, as the smell of burned flesh
faded and my nausea eased. Arms locked around me, holding me immobile as
Borosage raised the prod again. I shut my eyes, a flood of curses in Hydran and
Standard spilling out of my mouth. I let them come, not able to stop them.

But the blistering shock of pain didn’t happen ....

I opened my eyes finally, ffiy body still trembling, my jaw
clenched with aching anticipation. Borosage stood just beyond reach, the prod
held rigidly at his side. Somehow Perrymeade had come to be standing in the
space between us. Both of them were looking at me with expressions I didn’t
have a clue about.

Perrymeade glanced down; not away from the fury in my eyes,
but down at something in his hand:
Luc Wauno ‘s medicine pouch.
I must
have dropped it, struggling to get away.

“K_Kissindre?” I managed, finally ... Wauno?”

“Still hospitalized,” he said.

Relief burned my face:
Alive. At least they were’ alive
....
But as I looked up at him again, I understood perfectly what was in
his eyes.

“She barely survived the crash. If the rescue team had been
any longer getting to them ....”

I bowed my head, more tears running down my face ... I’m
soffy. I’m so soffy ....”

“I told you what he was,” Borosage said, oozing
satisfaction. “Is that why HARM recruited you, freak? T’io make their kill for

DKEAMF”ALL / 555

them? To murder innocent Humans for those poor persecuted
aliens who were too helpless to do it themsslvss—?”

I bit my lip, feeling the pain in my chest double. I couldn’t
make myself face Perrymeade again even for long enough to tell him why the
words were lies, tell him how wrong they were, how out of control everything
had gotten .... I looked down at the brand Borosage had laid on me: the
blistered, weeping hole in my chest. It looked like someone had tried to rip my
heart out. I felt afinored hands trap me as my knees got weak.