Dreamfall (63 page)

Disbelief caught me by the throat. I jerked my stare away
from him, telling myself it was just a formality, that there was no way in hell
he could have survived the corporate massacre when the entire Tau Board had
been deposed.

He looked toward us as they crossed the room,. and his eyes
were full of hate. The mind behind them was as unreadable to me as any of the
Board members’ were. “Miya—?” I murmured.

But then I saw that Natasa had come in with the Tau delegation.
He broke away from the formation, and his rigid, unsmiling face came to life as
he spotted Joby and started toward us. Miya didn’t answer me as Joby’s
attention drew her own to his father.

“Daddies!” Joby cried, looking from me to Natasa, delighted.
Natasa’s smile widened; he held out his artns, and then Miya’s concentration
was entirely focused on making their reunion all it should be. I glanced at
Naoh, went on watching her as she watched Borosage. She looked at him the way
prey would watch a hunter ... or a hunter would watch prey.

The Tau vips flowed into the waiting mass of Draco vips, FTA
observers, and Hydran Council members, until they were all one
indistinguishable mass of shifting colors and loyalties. They greeted each
other with the hollow goodwill of the profoundly relieved. All of them were
hoping their separate ordeals were finally over; all of them were trying to
believe that even if this wasn’t a position they’d ever wanted to find
themselves in, it was better than the alternative.

A chime sounded, signaling that the ratification ceremony
was beginning. The crowd began to move toward the wide doorway that led into
the main hall, where the treaty waited at the center of a showy tech display,
each segment glowing on a separate screen, hypertext ramifications and
clarifications ringing them like haloes of enlightenment.

I leaned against a pillar, closing my eyes. The playback of
a synthesized voice I recognrzed as Ronin’s began to recite the terms of the
agreement aloud, in case anyone here hadn’t bothered to study it beforehand. I
felt the terms of Tau’s penance wash over me like cool water, leaving a
pristine surface of possibility. Tau and Indy media hypers were everywhere in
the crowd assembled here, recording every nuance as Humans and Hydrans laid the
foundation for the future they were about to share, like it or not.

I checked off the terms of the treaty against the agenda in
my head, my respect for Ronin climbing a notch with every need that was met:
lifting of restrictions on technological exchange between Humans and Hydrans,
arnnesty for all imprisoned Hydrans, rehab and training programs, quotas for
integrating Hydrans into the Human workforce, no more tampering with the
magnetosphere to redirect the cloud-whales’ journeys. And for the contract
laborers, sffict regulation of work safety conditions at all Tau installations,
with FTA inspection teams on-site for the indefinite future.

Tau had argued that they couldn’t survive restrictions like
that; that their economy would collapse. The FTA’s response had been,
Adapt
and try, or die now.
Draco had had to back them up or lose more face—and
face more trade restrictions on the rest of its hegemony. Caught between those
pincers of power, even Tau couldn’t squirm free.

I listened to the members of the new Tau Board mouth optimistic
platitudes as one by one they touched the display, committing their approval to
the pennanent record. I wondered how surprised they’d be if it actually turned
out to be better.

“I suppose you think this is all your doing, ’breed?” a
voice said behind me.

I turned around, suddenly face-to-face with Borosage. I
barely controlled my urge to smash in his face—to wipe that smugness off it, to
force him back behind the invisible line he’d crossed into my personal space. “Yeth,”
I said, forcing a smile instead. “Pretty much.”

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he
muttered, his face barely changing expression. He glanced away. “Too bad you
won’t be staying on Refuge long enough to see what really happens to all your
big ideas—”

“What makes you think I won’t?” I folded my arms, leaning
against the pillar again.

“You’re being deported, genetrash.”

I sucked in a breath, held it, while the words tried to
paralyze my brain. “I think you got it backwards,” I said finally. “You’re not
going to be around to see it all work out, because you’re about to do some
heavy time, you drug-dealing, sadistic piece of shit.”

He shook his head, a smile spread over his face like a
stain. “Not me, boy. Fahd’s taking my fall ... I’m still standing. I’m not
stupid. I knew the Board and that cocksucker Sand would try to download the
guilt onto me. I could see where it was all leading. They thought they’d take
me down, but I got them first. I have my ways—” He tapped the metal half dome
covering his head. “I have records of things you wouldn’t believe; things they
never even suspected I knew about them.” I realized that he must have spent his
drug profits hotwiring his brain with undetectable snoopware. “I know where all
the bodies are buried—and who wanted them dead. Why do you think I’m still
here, boy, when not a single member of the old Tau Board is?”

I glanced away at the last of the signers putting their seal
on the official record, to applause that sounded as artificial as static.
It
was done,
something in my head insisted. It was done, and there was nothing
he could do to change that, nothing more he could do to hurt anyone I cared
about, not even me .... I searched the crowd, trying to catch Perrymeade’s eye,
or Ronin’s. I saw Naoh staring back at me, at Borosage beside me, as if we were
magnetic north.

“I’m still in charge here,” Borosage muttered. ‘And while I
am, no freak will ever feel safe on this side of the river. And that includes
you, boy. Especially you—” He raised his hand. I backed up a step, my fists
clenching, and hated myself for it.

(Borosage—)

It wasn’t until I saw the sudden rage fill his face that I
realized I’d only heard someone calling his name in my mind.

He turned around. Naoh was standing right there beside us,
her eyes slit-pupiled. “I told you, never do that to me, you Hydran
glgf
—”

Her face didn’t change. “So you are still in charge, then? Everything
else is a lie ...,” she said, out loud this time. “That is the Human
Way—destroy your enemies before they can destroy you.”

He smirked. “You know it, sweet thing. You know me ... real
well.” He reached out, touched her cheek with a thick finger. I saw her barely
stop herself from cringing away. “So now I’m safe, and you’re forgiven. It’ll
go back to being the way it was, business as usual, between you and me, and
your people.”

A tremor cracked her control.

“Naoh ...” I whispered. “Don’t.” I thought that she’d
ignored me, except that suddenly I couldn’t move.

“No,” she said, her gaze still on Borosage. “I will never be
forgiven. And you are not safe—” I felt the power shift focus inside her, felt
it building as the pressure turned to pain inside my head ... saw terror fill
Borosage’s face as she invaded his mind and took him over. A high, thin whine
started in his throat; he began to drool.

(Miya—) I cal|ed, with blind desperation.
(Miya!)

Naoh glanced at me distractedly, as if she’d heard me, and
an odd smile played over her lips before she looked back at Borosage.

(Are you ready to die, monster?) she said, inside his mind
and somehow inside mine. (Feel your brain ... feel each cell in it begin to—)

“Naoh!” Suddenly Miya was there between us and inside our
heads. Her hands closed on Naoh’s shoulder like she was trying to physically
drag Naoh out of her homicidal rage.

Naoh’s fist shot out, caught Miya square in the face,
dropping her like a stone with the unexpectedness of the attack. Naoh looked
back at Borosage, whose face had turned a mottled purple. He was making a sound
now like somebody being gutted.

I stood there, helpless to do anything but watch, the pain abcessing
in my head. Miya struggled to her feet, blood running down her chin. She looked
away toward the place where the crowd was still going through the motions of
the Human ritual. Abruptly the empty doorway held a figure—Hanjen’s.

(Help us—!) I couldn’t tell if he even heard me. I saw his
eyes widen, but before he could move Sand was standing beside him. Sand laid a
heavy hand on his shoulder, murmuring something in his ear. I saw Hanjen’s face
slowly crushed by emotions I couldn’t feel as he stood watching us, but doing
nothing at all to stop what was happening.

Miya screamed with anguish and frustration, but only inside
my head. She stood paralyzed by Naoh like I was now, helplessly watching her
sister turn Borosage’s brains to jelly in front of our eyes. I saw blood and
something worse start to leak out of his nose. His eyes rolled up in his head;
his body spasmed in the
air
like an epileptic puppet, when
it should have been writhing on the floor.

Naoh’s eyes flooded with tears; her face contorted as she embraced
the agony I felt echoing through my soul .... Borosage screamed, and it was a
death cry ripped from a living corpse. Naoh screamed with him as his death fed
back through the circuit of insane rage that joined them like lovers. I felt my
own heart stumble, suddenly realtzing Miya and I were trapped with them inside
the circuit—

My vision strobed,
black/white ...
and then suddenly
the horror in front of us was happening to someone else. Borosage pitched
forward on his face, no longer a prisoner of Naoh’s vengeance. When he finally
hit the floor he was only a sack of meat, lying facedown in a spreading pool of
blood and body fluids.

Naoh collapsed on top of him, her eyes wide and staring. Her
pupils were pits of blackness; blood ran from her nose.

I swayed, barely staying on my feet as I suddenly got back
full control of my body. Miya staggered forward. She collapsed in my anns,
sobbing. The sound was hard and pitiless, and at the molten core of her mind
the same white-hot sun of fury that had destroyed her sister was still burning.

“I love you,” I mumbled, holding her close, trying desperately
to reach her. (I love you, Miya! Please, please, don’t leave me ...)

She raised her head, her green eyes like an emerald desert,
even though her voice still sobbed out grief. She took my face in her hands.
And then her mind filled me with
tenderness/yearning/love
as pure and
limitless as if the two of us existed only in our souls, looking down like the
angel
untouched by anything earthbound, even the blood pooling
around our feet.

(I can hear you. I can ...) I thought, with incredulous joy.
I realized then that in the split second before Naoh had died with Borosage,
Miya had broken free, protecting us from the feedback of their deaths.

But she buried her face in my tunic, as if she could never
shut it all out: the room, the horror, the truth.

A mob of guards and gaping strangers were already gathering
around us. We held each other up, held each other together, held on to each
other like drowners in a nightmare sea ... like refugees.

“What the hell happened here?” Sand was standing in front of
us now; his indignation was almost believable. Behind him a dozen Corpses were
pointing their guns at us.

“Like you don’t know,” I said thickly. “Like you didn’t let
it happen.” Sand glared a warning at me. “They’re dead. She killed him ... and
it killed her.”

“‘It’?” Sand snapped. “‘It’ what?”

“The feedback,” Miya muttered. “It’s what happens when a
psion kills ...”

“It’s what happened to me,” I said.

He went on looking at me; only the muscles in his jaw told
me that he’d kept himself from saying something. He lifted his hand, brought it
down; the guns disappeared, the ring of guards backed off, taking the crowd
with them.

Sand stayed where he was, looking at us, looking down at the
bodies of Naoh and Borosage. “I see,” he murmured, at last. “There is a certain
dreadful symmetry to this, I suppose ....” His mouth curved up in a cryptic
smile like the one he’d shared with Lady Gyotis.

Miya lifted her head, glaring at him, like what lay behind
the smile was perfectly clear to her.

As he met her eyes Sand’s body tautened the way hers had,
and I saw a totally unexpected emotion fill his face. It was one I actually
recognized ... fear. “No further questios,” he murmured, and turned away. “Natasa!”
he shouted.

Natasa pushed through the wall of stunned faces, carrying
Joby. “Yes, sir?” He looked as grim and tense as we all probably did. He
stopped short, like he was protecting Joby from what he saw, even though I
could tell from Joby’s face that he’d slipped into a fugue state when Miya lost
control to Naoh. Perrymeade stood behind them like a worried shadow.

Natasa’s face was expressionless as he moved forward far
enough to glimpse the bodies, like so many conflicting emotions were filling
him at once that they canceled each other out. I wondered where Hanjen had
gone, whether he was breaking the news to the Hydran Council members or whether
he couldn’t bear the sight of this.

“Some bad news, and some good news,” Sand said. “It appears
District Administrator Borosage was the victim of a murder-suicide committed by
the former leader of HARM. So it seems that you will become Riverton’s new
District Administrator, after all. Odd, isn’t it, how justice is sometimes
served by the strangest means.” He glanced at the bodies, back at Natasa and
Perrymeade. “Since you and Agent Perrymeade will be working together closely in
the future, I suggest that you begin now, by dealing with these bodies. I will
expect your report.”

Natasa stood where he was, looking as vacant-eyed as his
son. Perrymeade laid a hand on his shoulder; Natasa started. “Yes, sir,” he
murmured.