Psion (19 page)

“Sure.” I nodded.
“The same to you.”

We were standing in another cavern, one that the Hydrans saw as a meeting place, even though there were no openings in these walls, either. I felt dizzy and confused; the pain in my gut was getting worse. But still I was able to see things in this room that didn’t belong in a cave; alien things, but things the human side of me half recognized as high tech. And then I saw someone appear at the other end of the room. My eyes wouldn’t focus, and at first I thought I was seeing things. They looked like humans.

I dug my hands into my eyes and looked up again. They were still real, standing at the far end of the hall. Another Hydran was with them, but I knew they weren’t prisoners: maybe three of them, staring back at me. Murmuring and pointing. I looked at my hands. I tried to yell, “I’m human!” but I wasn’t sure anyone had heard it except me.

The Hydrans beside me were telling them, (Here was the one they had been waiting for, the promised,
the
key. I had the true gift, and the sign had been laid upon me. I was being delivered safely to them. Now at last they could keep their own promises-)
The
thought had a sudden sharpness behind it.

I felt someone else reach into my mind then; a human probe. I didn’t try to block it, and it was gone again as quickly as it had come.

(He is the one. We thank you. Now everything will happen as we promised.) It was one of the humans, answering the Hydrans; the one who’d probed me.

Pain drove into my stomach and I doubled over; I felt one of the Hydrans catch hold of my arms. The fingers felt like steel.

(I’m all right . . . let go of me.)

The hold loosened and I straightened up with my arms pressed against my stomach. I could feel the one
who’d traded thoughts before with the Hydrans
ask what was wrong. The humans came toward us across the room.

My eyes cleared again and I could see their faces at last. But I saw only one face.
Siebeling’s.
Then suddenly it all came clear to me. The contact at the Sakaffe Institute, from the psions who were making trouble out here in the Crab Colonies. . . . They were here, now. And Siebeling, who’d done this to me, was here with them. I wanted to tell them who he was, to pay him back for it. But I couldn’t shape the words anymore, or even the thoughts. Then all I remembered was falling into his arms.

After that I was lost for a long time, doing dreamtime without end while my body paid the price. My mind sealed itself off from the sickness of the hurting, helpless flesh that held it prisoner. But inside the formless walls of my brain, some part of my consciousness still wandered, restless, afraid to surrender to what might be the final sleep of all.

And so I drifted through a strange dark universe, startling awake images and memories, seeing them flare up like embers from a long-hidden fire. I saw my life flicker past me, in bits and pieces, like they say you do when you’re dying. And I felt the nerve circuits open and
close,
the currents flow, the messages being sent and the changing chemistry and pressures of life inside my brain. . . . I was those things, sensing needs, tending to them, taking a part in my own healing in a way I’d never imagined I could do.

Or maybe that was all a dream, or maybe the dreams were only a part of a greater rhythm, carried on the tide of a universal sea. I had drowned in that sea when the Hydrans took my mind-and been reborn. I’d felt the beauty of their oneness and their sharing, of barriers and walls broken down to let in the healing strength of shared lives. And alone in its own darkness my mind ached to feel that sharing again. I ranged further and deeper, searching the past for a sign, a guide-crying into the unknown with a voice I could barely control.

And I was answered. Reliving my life, I found memories tangled up with my own that had never been mine before-like drawn to like from the other side, cracking the shell of solitude, giving refuge to my dreams and escape from my nightmares. . . .

Hands, thin child’s hands-my hands, smeared with rotting fruit, pulling apart compacted wads of garbage, cramming slimy bits into my mouth; swallowing, gagging. . . . Scarred, bloody hands-my hands, my fists beating some nameless punk senseless with terrified bloodlust for calling me freak, because if I didn’t the rest of his gang would close in and take me apart. Daring to steal the jacket off his back where he lay, because I needed one. Daring to turn my back on the rest of them and stagger away, because feeling him break and bleed made me sick, and all I wanted from them was to be left alone. . . . Beating my bruised fists against the wall in some icicle-hung alley, cursing with the pain of it, cursing because it didn’t help; because the weight of my own life was too heavy, and sometimes I wished, I wished . . .

. . . Wishing I could fly away. Standing on a silver balcony under the night sky, jewel-covered hands clinging to the vine-covered railing: white-knuckled, slender, woman’s hands (not my hands, not my body, not even my own memory, fusion, confusion). Strands of gleaming black hair slithered free from the coils at the back of my head, clinging to my tear-wet cheeks. The agony of half a thousand blind emotions at once tortured my helpless mind; but there was no escape from the reception in the embassy at my back, drunken lecherous selfish greedy pitying hating screaming. . . .
Biting my red-stained lips, to keep from screaming to drown them all out.
No escape, no escape, help me, God, help me, please please someone. . . . Staring up into the empty sky filled with stars (strange stars, stars in patterns someone named Cat had never seen). Losing myself in the glory of stars- And feeling a poem-seed take root in my soul, until I forgot everything, even tears, in the sudden need to give the poem life. . . .

. . . Alive, dancing through a sweltering Oldcity night to the heartbeat rhythm of endless music, giddy from a jolt of glissen, swept up in the arms of a party that had spilled into the streets and didn’t care who joined in. . . .

. . .
Dead.
Staring and staring at the transcript of the ‘cast handed to me in the sterile hall of a med center, reading the words over and over that couldn’t be true.
(Fusion, confusion; not my eyes, green cat eyes that could barely read my own name; not my memory, not my life.)
My life coming to an end with the end of someone else’s, my wife butchered, my child gone, all gone. . . . My eyes blurring out of focus, the walls falling away, the world crumbling, dropping out from under me . . . lost, lost. . . .

. . . Lost, in endless fields of whiteness under a rippling sky. . . . Lost, drowning in an ocean of bodies twice my size, nighttime in Godshouse Circle. Running, falling, crying,
crazy
with the fires exploding in my head. Shrieking my loss to the world until I lost my voice, until the holocaust of horror burned itself out at last and left my mind in ashes. Whimpering in the lap of a sagging old woman I never saw again as she held me, held me, murmuring slurry booze-soaked words, not the right words, not the right voice; my world, my past, even my name lying in ashes, smothered, dead. . . . Lying at peace in someone else’s arms, long years after: the soft, sweet-scented arms of a girl named Gallena. Breathless with discovery, feeling all my senses heavy with joy-trying not to see the emptiness in her eyes when I told her how she’d made me feel. “Where’s the stuff?” she said, looking away. “You promised.” I got out my handful of escape and shared it with her. We lay there together talking about our dreams; until her pimp walked in on us and threw me down the stairs. . . .

. . . Crossing the rain-gray Latai Range with a woman I loved, on a Colony world called Timb’rellet, to reach an outland settlement that had once been my home (but not my home, fusion). . . .

. . .
Oldcity, my home.
A necklace slipping loose, into my palm; a blade clipping the strings of a brocade pouch.
An angry hand closing over my wrist, twisting my arm, bending my thumb back and back-painstars. . . .

. . .
Leaving home: moving, unresisting, swallowed up into the heart of a starship, seeing the insignia of Centauri Transport everywhere.
Surrendering and striking back-leaving behind the family and the life I’d always known (but not my life, confusion) and the heartbreaking, mindbreaking indifference, the disgust, the fear. Knowing all the while that there was no escape, that it followed even now, wearing new faces, new minds, eating away my soul; always with me, until death. . . .

. . .
Lying on a mat in the back room of an abandoned building that was shelter for a dozen other thieves and boytoys.
Hearing voices drift in from another world; shaking with fever, wondering if I was going to die, and how long it would be before anybody noticed. . . .

. . . Looking out through the walls of a corporate tower, the gleaming transparent walls as clear, as hard, as unfeeling and unyielding as the minds of the ones I served (but not mine, not my memories or minds). Crumbling under the weight of their derision, trying to pity their fear, trying to win by surrendering, to earn a respect that would never exist in minds as dead as carrion. . . .

. . . Looking out through the windows of my eyes (but not my eyes) at empty faces, treating an endless stream of wounded minds, life’s work that had lost all meaning because the ones who meant everything to me were gone, and had taken all meaning with them, turning all my windows into walls. . . .

. . . Looking down into the midnight waters of the lake, as dark as the darkness in my soul (but not my soul)-softly lapping, whispering peace, oblivion, an end. . . .

. . . Shocked out of oblivion by the press gang closing in. . . . Aching for oblivion as a stranger’s heavy hand, with sharp heavy rings, closed over my arm. . . .
Small trembling hands, my hands, lifted, begging. . . .
Hunger aching in my belly . . . blue dust glowing on my skin . . . music playing . . . green ice walls . . . blue stone tombs . . . wormhole alleys boring into the endless darkness of the underworld. . . .

. . . The sudden brilliance of the Street of Dreams, music and life and showers of gold. . . . The bright rush of a thousand living minds into the space of my own, the input of alien senses bursting apart the walls of my prison and filling me with light, more light than I’d ever seen, growing brighter and brighter, burning away the darkness. A transformation, another world. . . .

Daylight.
I opened my eyes and the sun filled them, blinding, beautiful, its warmth lying across my face. I shut my eyes, opened them again, not believing. . . .
and
it was dusk, with long blue shadows stretched out on the bed like mourners. I heard music, somewhere far away, voices and laughter. All I could see were the ceiling and walls where they met in the gray angle of a corner, my bare arms greasy with nutrient gel,
a
monitor pad lying across my chest. I didn’t know where I was, but I felt peaceful and proud to be waking up there, as if it was a place I’d reached after a long journey. I sighed and slept; not afraid to, now.

Sunlight, prying at my eyes.
I drifted up into the new day, felt its warm touch moving over my face. . . . Human touch, my mind said. I opened my eyes and watched the room slide into focus, and with it the hand moving away from my face, a face looking down at mine-a face I’d never thought I’d see again.
(Jule?)
I’d wanted to say the word, but I couldn’t; my mind said it for me. I saw Jule’s face brighten with surprise. She leaned forward, starting to smile.

My hand trembled in the air until she caught it, completing the circuit of her reality and mine. (Yes, Cat, yes!) Her sending dazzled my mind like a miracle-not short-circuited anymore by defenses I couldn’t let down. And suddenly I knew how much I’d missed her, and knew I’d never really missed anyone before. My voice struggled in my throat, but nothing would come. Feeling I couldn’t put into words burst through the link between us like an electric shock; her hand tightened in a spasm and she pulled free. But her mind didn’t cut me off. It held me, calm and steady and accepting, as she reached out to the table beside the bed and brought a cup of water up to my mouth. She helped me drink it; nothing had ever tasted half as good. I sighed and drank again.

A portable hospital monitor sat on the other side of the bed, scanning everything my body did and reading out meaningless garbage on a screen; the pad still rested across my chest. But we weren’t in any hospital room, and I heard music and voices again from somewhere, things I hadn’t heard since I’d left Quarro.
Quarro. . . .
I let it rise up into my mind, let myself believe I could be back in Quarro: safe, protected, cared for. That my time in hell was over, and everything was really all right at last.

Jule took the empty cup away from my mouth. I lay back on the bed with a half-assed grin stretching my cracked lips. Just watching her move was pure pleasure; even seeing her dressed in heavy pants and boots, shirt and shawl, my eyes were filled with her beauty and grace. I flexed my fingers; my hands ached like the hands of an old man. They were splotched with yellow and purple, like I’d been bleeding inside. So were my arms. But the marks were already fading; the worst was past. I wondered how the rest of my body looked, but I didn’t really want to know. At least I wasn’t blue anymore. . . . I said, “God, I want a camph.”

Jule looked back at me, the heavy black braid rolling on her shoulder. Her smile filled with gentle irony and crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Tough,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me, or my chances of getting what I wanted.