Virginia Hamilton (8 page)

We can rest here, if you want to,
Thomas traced.
Lee, you want to rest here?

Here is any different from back there or up ahead?

“I was only thinking of you,” Thomas said. He found that, within Levi’s mind, there was no need for him to trace.

Well, you don’t have to think of me. The sooner we get farther, the farther away we’ll be.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Thomas said.

Makes as much sense as thinking it matters whether I rest
, Lee traced wearily.

“I’m just trying to help you.”

Since when have you thought about me, Tom-Tom? Why you forced me out on this
—
this death run … I know it wasn’t to help
me.

They were silent. Levi stumbled, fell to one knee. He got up, brushing himself off.

“You do need to stop. You can’t go on much longer.”

If I stop, I won’t get going again and Miacis will catch you
—
is that what you want to happen?

“I thought you were on
their
side.”

I’m not on anybody’s side.

“But you go along with Her Majesty, with letting Justice lead us into this stink-hole over and over again.”

It has nothing to do with going along with her,
Levi traced.
It’s
…
it’s that I know she is the Power.

“Wouldn’t be too sure of it if I was you. Least, not here.”

She is the Power, Tom-Tom. And if she believes we have to come here, that it’s her place, her destiny, I guess you call it, to be here
—
well, then I’ll do my part to help her get here.

“Even when it means half-killing yourself,” Thomas said.

A pause. They both were aware of the draining effect Dustland seemed to have on Levi.

Even that,
finally Levi traced.

“Well, you must need to suffer, buddy. I always knew you had some love of misery. Some death wish!”

Couldn’t be worse than living with you always torturing me.

Thomas couldn’t think of a reply. He remembered he had promised his dumb sister,
blind
Justice, that he would never again use his power on his brother. Of course, he’d lied. What did she expect, the truth?

And now he felt smothered in Levi’s sorrowing mind. He needed to break out, and he did so. Found himself walking along a few paces in front of Lee. And felt like turning, snarling back at his dummy brother. But what good was it going to do? He shrugged and headed on.

When they walked with each other this way, with neither of them within the other’s mind, Thomas made them both invisible. Nothing whatever of them showed. Although their mind-tracing and talking was as sharp and alive as ever, their physical condition was awful to see, and the reason Thomas kept them invisible. He had blisters on his lips from the daytime grinding heat. His mouth hurt, too. Both his eyes and Levi’s were red-rimmed and strained. Lee had lesions on his neck; festering liquid seeped from them, running in stringy rivulets down his chest.

Thomas wouldn’t let himself think about what was possible, and what was real and not real. Blisters, lesions, dust all over them—what was
them?
How was it they carried each other’s persona? How to walk or run, the same as they did at home? He knew his skeleton was within his body. But his good sense told him that neither his skeleton nor his body could be here in the future. That went for Levi and the rest of them. Hard enough understanding that their minds were here.

He shivered at the thought of his mind trapped in Dustland and his real, solid and alive body off in the past. Home. A yearning for home touched him deeply and caused him to strangle a cry.

But if the body is at home, what is this, blistering and hurting? Stumbling from exhaustion?

His mind shifting. To die in Dustland? was his next thought. For us, maybe just a feeling of death.

He opened the mysterious corridor between his mind and Levi’s. It was a one-way conduit from him, through which, his brain waves flowed and summoned the identical brain waves of his brother. They fused as one. The passageway allowed Thomas to connect telepathically with Levi whenever he felt like it and to break the connection at will. Levi could not trace telepathically without Thomas or one of the others to start.

Thomas repeated what he had been thinking, adding,
If there’s no body to die, how does the mind know to stop?

Then it can’t,
Levi traced, not a bit surprised by the intrusion of Thomas’ morbid speculation. For he had become obsessed with similar thoughts.
In Dustland we can’t die. Only if something hurt us back home. If our far-real bodies got battered
—
I mean, our arms and heads and stuff
—
and our lives came to an end. Would all of us here, whatever there is of us here, go … poof?

That’s what I think,
Thomas traced.
That’s how I think it would have to be. That’s the reason I make it so we can’t see ourselves right now. Because, seeing us out here with no food for who knows how long it has been, well, logic has to tell us we’re hurting and losing strength.

But in the mind, mind-tracing, we’re as strong as ever!

You got it,
Thomas traced quietly.

So here we have to be only
—
mind.

Mind it is and mind it has always been,
traced Thomas.
Mind your P’s and Q’s,
he joked.

But, Tom-Tom, when you’re not making us invisible, we can see
…

Abruptly, Thomas closed the corridor between them. He erased the sentence fragment as Lee formed it. At once he made them visible so Lee would have something else to occupy him other than what Thomas believed was a dangerous line of thought. Like Justice, he was beginning to uncover a clue to the mystery of Dustland.

They, all of them, were
mind
-travelers in Dustland.
They
knew that.

Levi shuddered at the sight of his own self. He had always distrusted his body, which grew weaker and more sickly with each time-travel. And now he hollered out as he glimpsed his bloody feet. The grinding quality of the dust had worn away his socks through his sandals. Seeing the wounds, he felt the pain. And moaned softly, done in at last.

Thomas knew he had to get him holed up somewhere right away. And this was as far as his plans would take Levi.

There’s some shelter up ahead. Lee? I think I see some rocks. You can rest by them.

Where … where are they?

Right up ahead. There!

Rocks worn smooth and shining dully through the gloom, as if dimly illuminated from within.

Thomas couldn’t help smiling to himself. He could create the images he needed here in Dustland the same as he could at home. Here his magic was even better. It felt larger and more real than anything he imaged at home. He couldn’t be sure how good he was; he just got better and better.

The rocks up ahead were as real as any clump Thomas had seen anywhere. And yet he wasn’t certain if he had built them there by thinking he needed them, or if he’d suddenly really seen them through the murk where they’d always been.

Well, does it matter? he asked himself. He was becoming at ease with Dustland’s eerie qualities.

I’m not going to let this place spook me the way it has Justice. Getting into what is and isn’t so real will turn you clear around. If she keeps at it, she’ll never work her way out. Which suits me just fine! But definitely the word here is
weird.
Something sure is going down. Not so sweet, either.

He was sure something strange was going on. And he surrounded the thought in a thick .and searing cold, a subterranean gloom of icewalls that nothing could penetrate.

Mind shifting again, thinking: Oh, man. What is and what isn’t! But I have to admit, it’s the most exciting, oddest thing I’ve ever been into. If I can find out how it all works, I bet I could … take over! Wouldn’t
that
be something? But never let Justice know. Don’t look at things too closely yourself. It messes up your mind if you do. Don’t dare.

The rocks loomed. Dust hanging in shrouds which curled and waved slowly across the windless land. Dust thicker, than ever.

Levi commenced coughing. By the time they had reached the rocks, he was gasping for air. He leaned close to Thomas for protection.

Thomas tasted grit. He wrapped his arms around his brother’s head and neck, covering him as best he could.

Try breathing through the hood of your tunic like I’m doing,
Thomas traced.
Here, pull it up and around …

What hood?
gasping, Levi traced.
You made up these clothes!

Look, there’s something real about everything I make up here. You know there is. And wouldn’t it be
—He broke off and started over.
We’ll figure it out later. Now, just do what I tell you.

Bowed down against the rocks, Levi held the hood to his mouth. It did seem to help. The dust had gotten so thick he had to keep his eyes shut tight.

Good thing we don’t have to open our mouths to talk,
Thomas traced.

Levi broke in on him, etching thoughts in slivers:
You’ll get through. I bet if anyone can survive this, it’ll be you.

Stop being so dumb.
Holding himself in against feeling.

Tom-Tom? We aren’t here, are we? You said our bodies weren’t.

Echoes in Thomas’ brain like gusts of wind. Sounds of Levi struggling to breathe. Wind sounds in a backward-and-forward flow, as if from the past, where their bodies waited, to the future.

Better not think,
Thomas traced.

Lee’s dread spread out around them. He whined:
Tom-Tom? My feet. Can’t you do something?
Through caked dust, Levi’s feet oozed blood.

Think I’m some healer?
Thomas stormed.
Well, I’m not.
Irritated into being reminded of Justice, and Dorian, the healer.

Wouldn’t mind having Dorian along, though, Thomas thought.

The illusion of Lee he’d made for them had to be still working. Justice would think her favorite brother was still safe beside her. And Miacis would think so, too. If all went as Thomas planned, it would be the real Levi that Miacis brought back and not himself. Thomas grinned. He could hear Justice now, chewing out the dog.

He sniffed the choking dust.

Miacis!

Ever alert, Thomas cut through the dust with his clairvoyance, sensing back along their trail. He used his finely tuned power with caution, fully expecting the animal to still be on their course but at a distance from them. It wasn’t long before he homed in on a life-form racing through.

What shocked him was how close the beast had come. He could sense the sweat-drenched fur, muscles rippling and surging beneath.

Tricked me! How’d she—? Must’ve missed a sense-post. Man!

Miacis was closing in. He had to get away at once.

Thomas had planned ahead, however. Not far behind, he had set up an illusion to slow Miacis down. He’d erected a mighty scaffolding in her way. It was packed with quivering shapes clinging to the supports and braces. Thomas had crashlanded their space vehicle some distance from the scaffolding. Gradually he had expanded the scaffolding into a slime-coated grandstand.

Wait till she hits that baby—it’s sweet!

For it was one of his finest illusions. There were twisted forms, perhaps human, lying quite still in the dust surrounding the crash site. The whole scene was planted to strike terror in anyone stumbling upon it. Those who had survived the entry into earth-future sat up in the arena, shrouded in a mildewing silence.

She’s close. Close! She’s in!

Thomas homed in telepathically as Miacis entered the illusion.

She would be his prey. If he could just terrify the wits out of her, she would turn tail and run. And she would become
his
slave.

Something’s wrong!

Miacis wasn’t slowing down. She wasn’t seeing anything.

Thomas closed his eyes and saw.

So that’s it! It hit him that Miacis simply couldn’t see a single thing. An illusion had to be seen before it could work.

Stone blind as a bloody bat! I let her catch up and she can’t even see! Well, she won’t catch
me!

Miacis would catch Levi. Thomas would place his own aura around his brother, enclosing Levi in the atmosphere of his being. The aura of mental and physical imprints intertwined were similar to scents. Never could they be mistaken for the imprints of anyone else once they were in place.

What of Lee’s aura?

It was not very strong, almost never overpowering. Thomas would thin it out, expand it as far as was safe.

Not to destroy it. Just to put his own in place over it, so you wouldn’t know it was there.

Discovering Thomas’ aura, Miacis wouldn’t question that the boy she captured was anyone but Thomas.

And then Thomas would blank out Lee’s brain and fill it with a fake persona. He would leave clues of himself in Lee’s thin blood and weak muscle.

Just in case Miacis should decide to check it all out, he thought.

Miacis!

Legs churning in a frenzy of running. Her coat as shiny as metal, the grinding dust polishing every hair. Miacis ranging. Tracking. Never tiring. Nothing in Dustland a hindrance to her.

Like searing steam on Thomas’ mind was Miacis’ good humor on his backtrail.

Have to get away from here!

Tom-Tom?
It was Lee.

Yeah?
as calmly as he could trace it.

Lee’s eyes were shut tight.
Tom-Tom.
He clutched at the rocks.
I’m breathing through the dust, through my hood, like you told me.

Yeah. That’s good.

But you know I can’t breathe through anything. Because I don’t have anything here to breathe with. My flesh and bone isn’t here
—
right? So what is it I hear and feel breathing? What walked out here and ran
—
is it me in the past keeps me breathing here
—
? Tom-Tom? I feel like I’m in a box. I’m afraid I’ll suffocate!

A distance grew in his desperate thoughts, as if some part of him had snapped and separated from the other. Suddenly he was cut off from a sense of the familiar. He was overwhelmed with sadness. His squeezed-shut eyes dribbled uncontrollable tears.