Dreamfall (54 page)

“Corporate Security did an admirable job of rescuing my
nephew,” Perrymeade said to Borosage. “It seems you knew the best way to deal
with these terrorists all along. I owe you an apology for ever questioning your
methods.”

Borosage showed his teeth in what passed for a smile. He
flicked the prod at my eye, making me cringe; his eyes measured Perrymeade’s
reaction. “I’m glad you’ve come to feel that way.’t

Perrymeade’s face stayed expressionless, professionally noncommittal,
even while he stole another look at the burn on my chest. “You were the right
one—the only one—Tau could have chosen to handle this situatior,” he munnured.
His gaze shifted away again.

“Deathbringer,” I said in HYdran.

Perrymeade glared at me. I didn’t know whether it was my
tone of voice he was reacting to or the fact that he didn’t know what I’d said.
He looked away from me with an effort. “What ate you going to do with him, now
that you have him?”

Borosage shrugged. “He’s guilty as hell of terrorism, kidnapping,
half a dozen crimes against the corporate state. And besides that, he somehow
got an illegal message off-world—”

“What message?” Perrymeade demanded, his voice rising. “Why
wasn’t I told about it?”

“Wasn’t your jurisdiction,” Borosage said, looking smug. “The
little son of a bitch hacked his way through the security programming. He sent
a message to the Feds, telling them there was a cover-up, to come here and
investigate us again.” He looked at fire, his face contorting. “They’re sending
another team—special investigators representing Isplanasky, the head of
Contract Labor, for God’s sake!” His fists knotted.

Perrymeade swore under his breath. “Tau knew about this?
When are they arriving?”

“They wouldn’t give us a date,” Borosage muttered. “But Tau
wants the ‘breed put down before they get here.”
put down ....
That was
what they did to animals.

“Executed—?” Perrymeade said, as if it surprised even him.

Borosage frowned. “No. He’s caused them to lose too much
face. We’ll take care of it here. But not before the freak tells us everything
he knows about HARM.”

“Don’t bother.” Perrlrmeade waved a hand at me without looking
back. “He won’t tell you anything. Nothing you can use. It’s not important now:
the Hydrans are beaten, they don’t want any more trouble—they won’t cause any
more, either. I have orders from the Tau Board that all sanctions are to be
lifted, with no further pursuit of the terrorists. That was the deal we made.
Hanjen himself gave me the information on where we’d find Joby.”

I raised my head in time to see Perrymeade’s faint smile
twist the knife. “Yes,” he murmured. “He told me everything .... He couldn’t
stand by and watch his people suffer any more because of you.” The satisfaction
in his face turned to disgust.

Borosage glanced from him to me and back again. He deactivated
the prod, tapping a rhythm on his thigh. “That’s too bad. I’m disappointed to
hear that. But if that’s what the Board wants ...” He grimaced and shrugged. “we’ll
move on to step two. Fahd, take this genetrash out and dispose of it.” He
jerked his head at me.

Fahd took hold of my ann and pressed his gun to my temple,
watching Perrymeade for a reaction. Perrymeade’s mouth fell open; he shut rt
again, his eyes narrowing.

I tried to pull aw&), but there were too many guards
still hotding me. “I want a hearing!” I said. “I’m a Federation cttizen—”

“Where’s your databand?” Borosage asked with a slow smile. “Where’s
your proof?”

I fuoze, remembering:
At the bottom of the river.
“I’m
still registered. I know my numbey—”

Borosage shook his head. “You threw it all away, freak, when
you crossed the river. You’re nobody now, and nobody’s going to miss you.”

I looked away at the wall, keeping my eyes as empty as my
mind.

He jerked me forward suddenly, making me swear with pain. “Nobody,
freak. That’s all you ate.” He let me go again. “Fahd.” He nodded toward the
door.

“My pleasure.” Fahd hooked a hand around my arm and shoved
me toward the exit.

“Wait,” Perrymeade said, the single word stopping Fahd in
his tracks like a death threat.

Fahd dragged me back around as he glanced at Borosage.

“What?” Borosage snarled, with sudden suspicion.

“I have an idea.” Perrymeade came forward, his hands behind
his back. He looked me up and down, not meeting my eyes. ‘A better idea ....
See that scar on his wrist?” He pointed. “My niece told me he used to be a
contract laborer. And he’s certified on a phase-field suit. He’s young and strong—why
waste him? Bond him. Send him to the place where my brother-in-law is Security
Chief. Burnell won’t ask questions .... The new team of Feds will come and go,
but he won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”

Borosage’s eyes widened, as if even he had never thought of
something that twisted.

“You fucking bastard,” I said.

“I want you to wish I’d let them kill you,” Perrymeade murmured.
“I want you to remember what you did to my niece, and to Joby’s family, every
time that you do.” He glanced at Borosage again.

Borosage nodded. “Do it,” he said to Fahd. “Have him bonded.”

“Heads up, boys—fresh meat.” The guard shoved me through the
doorway of the barracks where the bondies slept. There was a sloping ramp just
inside the door; it dropped out from under my feet before I could catch my
balance. I sHpped and fell, landing at the bottom in a heap. The door shut
behind me.

I scrambled to my feet, trying to hide my pain and
stupefaction as curious strangers drifted toward me. They all wore the same
faded maroon coveralls that I was wearing now. All of them wore the same
jewelry too—a red bond tag fused to the flesh of their wrist. I glanced down
for the hundredth time at my own wrist, banded in red—the tag and the swollen,
angry flesh around it. As I looked up again the entire world strobed red ...
the color of rage, of betrayal. The color of my worst nightmare.

Natasa hadn’t been waiting for me when I arrived: even Tau
must have been decent enough to give him and his wife some time to be with their
son. But the Riverton Corpses who hand-delivered me to the installation’s
security made sure they dumped the data on me directly into his personal
account, where it would be waiting for him when he returned.

Until then they were treating me the way they treated any
other bondie—like meat. I took in the room and the laborers with a long stare,
trying to keep my mind on the situation, trying not to panic. There were maybe
thirty others in this barracks; a work-shift crew probably, all working and
sleeping on the same schedule. There were bunks for sleeping, and a doorway at
the far end that probably led to the toilets. Nothing else, but it was more
than there’d been where I’d worked before. At the Federation Mines we’d slept
on mats on the floor.

Most of the others in the room didn’t even bother to look
up. They lay in their bunks or went on playing square/cubes in a group at the
back of the room. Only a handful of them drifted up to me, as unreal to my
shuttered senses as everyone I saw now. But their bodies looked as solid as a
wall, and about as friendly. I felt like I’d been thrown onto gang turf.

“What’s your name, kid?” one of them asked me, the biggest
one. Probably the alpha male, just because of his size. I watched how he moved:
he was heavy and slow. Probably a bully, depending on size, not skill, to get
his way. I figured I could take him if I had to.

“Cat,” I said. At the mines no one had been curious about anything.
They’d been too exhausted from overwork and too sick, their lungs wasted by
radioactive dust. Nobody gave a shit whether anyone else lived or died.

This was different. I might even have convinced myself that
it was better, except that they were looking at my eyes.

“Look at his eyes,” one of them said. “He’s got freak eleS—”

The others moved closer, peering at me. “What arc You, some
kind of ‘breed?”

“They don’t let freaks in here,” someone else said. “They
wouldn’t trust a psion. A freak could sabotage the works, or Spy—”

“Maybe he’s here to Spy on
u,S,
”
the big one
said. “They put you in here to mind-read us, freak? Report on us—?” He hit me
hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, right on the wound where Borosage
had burned me with the prod.

I doubled over, gasping, straightened, bringing my clenched
fist up with the motion, and drove it straight into his throat.

While he was busy retching I kneed him. I hit him with both
fists on the back of his neck as he doubled up. He hit the floor and stayed
there. I stood over him, breathing hard, watching the others hesitate. More
workers joined the circle, drawn by the fight. I heard them muttering,
spreading the news:
They had a freak for a new roommate, what were they
going to do about it ... ?
They glanced at each other, working up the
courage to move in on me. The noose of bodies began to tighten around me, all
of them hating me without even knowing me, their Human hands and feet too ready
to reduce me to something I wouldn’t recognize rn the mirror.

A hand closed on my arm.

I turned, rage blinding me as I crushed the instep closest behind
me with my boot, rammed an elbow into somebody’s eye socket, ripped out a
fistful of hair. I did it without even thinking, without even breathing—without
feeling anything. Proving with every howl of their pain that I was as Human as
they were.

With three more of them on the floor== it was easy to stare
the rest down. “Don’t fuck with me,” I said, my voice shaking. “The next son of
a bitch who touches me I’ll cripple for life.”

They backed away, slowly, their eyes never leaving my face.
My own fear and rage shone back at me from every side, from all those eyes with
round Human pupils. No one else made any move to see if I was serious.

The one who’d attacked me first stirred on the floor where I’d
left him. I put my foot on his neck, put my weight on it. “Where’s your bunk?”

He glared up at me with murder in his eyes, but he pointed finally,
to one near the back of the room.

“Find another one.” I took my foot off his neck and shoved a
path through the bondies still watching around us.

I went to his bunk and lay down on it, turning my back on
them. I huddled around the bone-deep, burning pain in my chest, biting my lips
to keep from whimpering, until the pain had dimmed enough so that I could think
about something, anything else ....

There was nothing I wanted to think about. I lay listening
to the curses and laughter of the square/cube players, the random fragments of
muttered conversation, until the lights went out for the night. And then I lay
in the dark listening for a footstep, for the sound of breathing, a murrnured
word: for anything that might warn me they were coming to get me ... for
anything that would prove I wasn’t alone.

They didn’t come for me. And I didn’t sleep all night,
trying too hard not to feel the pain ... trying too hard to feel.

I moved out with the others at the start of the new shift,
moving on autopilot, stupefied with exhaustion. I was all alone in my mind. I
might as well have been all alone in the universe ... until somebody I didn’t
see shoved me as we moved along a narrow catwalk two stories above the ground.
I banged against the guardrail; felt it shudder, squeal, and sn&p, as the
support wrenched out of its hole. I flung myself back, throwing all my

DKEAMF’ALL / 56I

weight away from the buckled railing. I caught hold of the
closest solid object—someone’s body—stabilizing myself.

“You fucking freak!” The bondie shoved me away; his elbow
dug into my chest. “You trying to kill me?”

I went down on my knees, doubled over on the metal walkway,
swearing helplessly with pain. He dragged me up by the front of my coveralls;
the seal tore open.

“Shit. Oh, shit.” He stared at the festering burn his arm
had just slammed into. It distracted him long enough for me to pull free of his
grip. “Who did that?”

“Corporate Security.” I pulled my coveralls together again,
sealing them up. The maroon cloth was stained with wetness from the weeping
sore.

He frowned, shaking his head; his fist relaxed as he backed
off from me. The others stared at me, sullen and silent.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep my trembling voice steady. “My
telepathy doesn’t work. I’m not going to read your minds. I can’t teleport out
of here; I can’t stop your heart just by thinking about it. In the last day and
a half I lost everything I had except my life. Just leave me
alone,
”

One of the ones I’d beaten up last night laughed. I looked
at their faces, figuring the odds, and knew that wasn’t going to happen. Unless—“I’m
qualified to use a phase suit. I’ll be your point man,” guessing no one here
liked reef-diving any better than the bondies I’d seen at the reef on the
Homeland. Right now the odds of me being killed by another suit failure seemed
a hell of a lot better than the odds of somebody knifing me while I slept.

“Tau doesn’t train freaks—”

o’I’m from off-world.”

“What’s holding it up?” A guard pushed his way forward, taking
the bondie’s place in front of me.

“I slipped,” I said.

He looked at the damaged rail, &t the rest of the
bondies, back at me. “You making trouble, freak?”

“No, sir,” I muttered.

The taser prod he carried came up until its energized tip
was staring me in the face. “Be more careful.”

I bit off a curse, ducking past it. The others around me
were already moving. I went with them, not looking back.

“I heard about him,” the one who’d shoved me muttered, glancing
at somebody else. “He’s that one—the one that took over the suit from Saban,
when he panicked in front of the Feds. Out on the Homeland. Right?” He looked
at me.