Dreamfall (60 page)

“How did he know that?”

“Miya told him,” Kissindre said. “He told my uncle, after he’d
agreed to help Tau find you ....” She looked away from my face and back again. “Borosage’s
men were everywhere on the Hydran side of the river, Cat. They forced their way
into houses and destroyed people’s belongings. They terrorized children in
school; they took away patients from the hospital and jailed them without any
cause. They embargoed food shipmsnf5—”

I shook my head, stunned as I realized that it really was
Han-jen who had told Tau where we’d taken Joby; suffendered his own foster daughter
to the Humans ... betrayed us, to save his people. He’d been trapped between a
rock and a hard place. But we’d put him there.

Perrymeade turned to Ronin, who’d been watching us with the
rapt attention of a man caught up in a threedy psychodrama when he’d expected
to see the Indy News.

“Mez Ronin,” Perrymeade said, suddenly hesitant ..,I ...
there are no words to say how solry I am about ... the deaths of your team
members.”

Ronin nodded wordlessly. The look of a disaster victim was
still deep in his dark, up-slanting eyes; that look would be there a lot longer
than the cuts and bruises on his face. His cropped black hair slid down across
his face as he nodded; he didn’t seem to notice. His hair, his eyes, reminded
me of someone ... the ta-Mings ...
JLtle,
whose face I hadn’t seen for
so long that it was getting hard to see her clearly in my mind ....

I pushed my own filthy hair out of my eyes for the tenth
time since I’d got on board, and glanced at Kissindre. She wasn’t looking at me
now. I looked away again, thinking about Miya. Borosage’s men had missed her at
the monast”ry, but I didn’t know what had happened during the time I’d been at
the reef interface ... whether she’d be waiting for me when I got to Freaktown,
whether she was safe, whether she was still free—

“... thank you,” Ronin said to me. Kissindre nudged my arm,
and I realized we’d been having a conversation I hadn’t been listening to.

“For what?” I said.

He looked surprised. “For all you’ve risked, to bring the
truth out.”

I saw Jule in my mind’s eye again as I looked at him. If it
hadn’t been for Jule, the feelings I’d had for her, I never would have met her
aunt, Lady Elnear taMing, or Natan Isplanasky, who’d sent Ronin here. I never
would have set foot on Refuge; I’d still be a half-breed street punk in Quarro’s
Oldcity, or else I’d be dead. None of this would have happened. But other
things would have. Maybe they wouldn’t have been any better. I shook my head;
looked out the window at nothing disguised as night.

“All the risks,” Ronin repeated==Isplanasky told me about
how he met you ....” He almost smiled. ‘And he said you sent him an illegal
message about conditions here. He said your style hadn’t changed much.”

I managed a smile of my own, hoping I never had to tell him
how I’d done it.

“And you’re the one who found the survivors inside the reef.”

I nodded again, the motion like a rictus, even though he
hadn’t really asked a question.

“You must have a lot to tell me. I’ve heard what Perrymeade
has to say. I’ve got testimony from Natasa. But I want what you know, what you’ve
seen, heard,
sensed,
every damn detail sf i1—” He held up his hand, palm
out. I blinked as I saw a recorder implant staring at me like a misplaced eye.

“How many people were on your team?” I asked.

He looked startled, then stunned, and I was solry I’d asked.
“Four,” he said faintly, like that one word held the mass of a planet. “Fouf ....”

He didn’t have to tell me the others hadn’t been strangers.
Slowly he closed his hand, hiding the recorder. For a long minute he didn’t say
anything more, didn’t ask anything more, as if all the false energy of
painkillers and denial had gone out of him and left him lost and hurting. He
was blinking too much when he looked up at me again; his face was set with
anger. He opened his hand, waiting for me to sPeak.

I hesitated, not certain where to start. “You know ... about
Joby?” I asked, reaching out from my seat to hold Joby’s hand. I thought the
fingers twitched, like they were trying to close around mine. I glanced at
Perrymeade and held out my artns. He hesitated, but then he passed Joby to me.
I held him close, remembering the wann, breathing weight of his small body.

I moved his hands, slowly and gently, until his arms were
around my neck. He held oo, clinging to me without my help.

“Hi, Joby,” I whispered, my throat tight. “Missed you ....”
Not knowing whether he could hear me, let alone understand me. I tried to find
my way into his thoughts, now that he was so close, but the inner space between
our minds had its own geography, and neither one of us had a sense of
direction.

“Perrymeade has told me his suspicions,” Ronin said gently,
almost hesitantly. “Is there more you can tell me?”

I glanced up, distracted, almost resenting the interruption.
I forced myself to get past it and answer him. “I can tell you more than anyone
knowS,” I said, and began at the beginning.

By the time I’d finished, Joby was lying asleep in my arns,
and we were passing over the lighted grid of Tau Riverton. I never thought I’d
be glad to see it again, and I wasn’t. But beyond the dark gash that marked the
river canyon were the random lights and dendritic streets of Freaktown.

I breathed a sigh of relief as we passed over the river
without being hailed by CorpSec. I wondered where Wauno was taking us, now that
Grandmother was gone.

He took us to Hanjen. He let the transport hover centimeters
above Hanjen’s rooftop, like he was afraid the building might not support its
mass. We climbed out, carefully, helping each other down.

Wauno left the ship suspended just above the roof and guided
us to a stairway leading down. I wondered why he’d brought us here, when Hanjen
had betrayed me once already. I understood now why Hanjen had done it, but that
didn’t make trusting him any easier. But I trusted Wautro, so I didn’t ask any
questions.

As we went on across the roof I noticed the remains of a
wall and pillars around its perimeter. There must have been a sheltered tower
up here once, for
afr,
for communing with the cloud-whales. Nothing was
left of it now but bits of masonry like broken teeth. I was surprised Hanjen
hadn’t replaced it. Maybe he’d felt like there was no way to reclaim what his
people had lost when they lost the an lirr, and the sight of a prayer tower
that would be meaningless forever wasn’t something he wanted to confront every
day.

Hanjen was waiting for us below, in a room I remembered. He
stiffened a little as he saw me come in, carrying Joby. I wasn’t sure if he was
reacting to what was in my eyes or just to the sight of me. The room looked the
way I remembered, filled with artifacts of a past that was gone forever.

I thought about the last time I’d seen him, how I’d been
with the HARM survivors after the CorpSec massacre, how he’d held Grandmother’s
lifeless body in his arrns and cursed us all for what we’d done. That day had
been just the beginning of the grief the Satoh had caused the Community ....
And even though he’d hated us then, and had every reason to, his act against us
had been an act of desperation, done to keep Borosage from grinding the embers
of a guttering fire into cold ashes.

Hanjen bowed formally to us, taking his eyes off me as he
said, “Namaste. Welcome to my home.”

The others bowed back to him, Wauno and Kissindre murmuring “Namaste”
as naturally as breathing. Perrymeade’s bow was awkward as he echoed “Namaste,”
the first Hydran word I’d ever heard him speak. Ronin imitated the others,
doing it well. I stood where I was, holding Joby, stiff and silent.

“Namaste,” another voice said.

“Miya—?” I turned.

She was already looking at me as she entered the room, as if
she’d known what she’d see, where each of us stood, even before I spoke.
(!—.CatJoby—!) Her mind slurred our names into one thought, shot through with
emotion. She crossed the room to us, moving as silently as if she was afraid we’d
vanish. But her smile widened with each step. As she closed the space between
us, she closed her eyes in concentration and took us gently inside the circle
of her mind.

My mind burst open like shuttered windows, and suddenly the
two of them were there inside me, sharing the view. (Namaste,) I said, finally
understanding its true meaning.

(I was so afraid for you—) she thought, kissing me as she
called me by my unspoken name.

“Mommy ... ?” Joby murmured, rubbing his eyes like he’d just
wakened from a strange dream to find us there. “Daddy.” He smiled—we were all
smiling, impossibly, in the same place at the same time, in our own pocket
world again. The room and everyone else in it had ceased to exist, and the
universe beyond it—

Someone teleported into the room, almost on top of us.

“Naoh!” I wasn’t sure how many of us said her name at once,
like a chorus. Ronin recoiled like he’d never seen anybody tele-port before.
Maybe he hadn’t.

I glanced at the others: Kissindre and Wauno, Perrymeade and
Hanjen, all caught with their expressions halfway between poles.

Naoh’s surprise became disgust as she turned to find Miya
with me and Joby. Her mental barrier ruptured the fragile link I shared with
them, before she cut us all out of her mind. She turned away, completing her
rejection of our existence.

Miya was back inside my thoughts instantly. I felt her try
to force an opening in the wall of her sister’s silence; to force Naoh to
acknowledge our right to be together ... felt her fail.

I held her back as she would have crossed the room. (Don’t,)
I thought. (It isn’t you. It isn’t us. It’s her.)

(She’s my sister—) Miya shook her head, straining against my
grip as the memories of a lifetime filled her mind. (Naoh needs me. Who else
does she have? I can help her—) I felt her loyalties slipping.

(Dammit, she tried to kill us!) I forced Miya to drink my
memories with her own, like blood in wine. (She’s sucking you in; she’s bes’ mod
....)

Miya pulled her gaze away from Naoh’s unyielding back. She
looked into Joby’s eyes, into mine ... collided with the ice dam of control
that barely held in my anger, and my fear of losing her again to Naoh.

I felt what it cost her to believe me; realized what she
couldn’t bear to let herself see, that for Naoh their lifelong bond had become
just a weakness to be exploited ....

Her resolve hardened into bitterness as she watched her
sister blow like a burning wind through the minds of everyone else in the room,
oblivious to us now.

I stiffened as Naoh singled out Ronin. In an eyeblink, she
was across the room in front of him. She pinned him against the wall with a
telekinetic field, stopping short of touching him physically. His eyes glazed
as she invaded his mind, ready to riffle through his memories back to the day
he was born. Nobody moved to stop her.

“Naoh!” I yelled, loud enough to break even her
concentration. “Get off him, you mindfucking bitch!” I crossed the room, fists
clenched.

She turned around, and her burning stare told me she would
have scrambled my brains if she could have. But she couldn’t. She turned back
to Ronin. This time she didn’t touch him, even with her mind. She only said,
out loud, “So you come from the FTA, and you claim you have the power to help
us?” She was speaking to him in Standard; I’d never heard her use it before.
They
all speak Standard,
Perrymeade had said once. Probably she always had too;
never using it had been intentional, political.

Ronin nodded, doing his best to hide his sudden terror and
his sudden relief. He glanced at Perrymeade, tt Hanjen, with something that was
half appeal and half incomprehension.

“Then why are you here, hiding from the Humans like a
meb-bet?”

Hanjen had been standing beside Perrymeade. Suddenly he was
between Ronin and Naoh. Ronin pressed back against the wall again, his face
going white. “He is here as my guest,” Hanjen said, “to learn about our
situation. And he is here for his own safety.” He touched Ronin’s arm, and
there was something more than just physical reassurance in the way it made
Ronin suddenly relax. Hanjen had reached into his mind without his realizing
it, spreading calm over the troubled water of his emotions. Hanjen led Ronin to
a cushioned settee across the room. Ronin sat down on it almost reluctantly,
like he was afraid it might disappear from under him.

Naoh stood with her arms crossed, her disdain clear enough
for even a Human to read, her desperation so obvious to me that I almost felt
soffy for her. Her hair was filthy and matted; her clothes looked like she’d
been sleeping in them. Her face was thinner and harder than I remembered, her
mouth even more bitter, her eyes lost in deep hollows of fatigue.

“I thought you said you didn’t know where she was,” Perrymeade
murrnured to Hanjen.

“I didn’t know.” Hanjen shook his head, looking from Naoh to
us—looking at Miya, with more on his mind than he was saying out loud.

Miya looked down and didn’t answer. Or maybe that was all
the answer she had.

“We’re sisters,” Naoh said defiantly, like Miya’s shamefaced
silence was just one more body blow to her self-control. “We are all the family
we have, because Humans killed our parents. The last of it. Forever.” She spoke
the words with a venom that made Han-jen flinch. “No matter what happens,
nothing is stronger than that.”

“It’s true,” Miya said quietly, looking at her sister with
something that was almost compassion. “If she’s nearby, I know ... \rye always
know. Ever since our parents died ....” She gave a small, helpless shrug; but I
felt her anguish as she glanced at me, knowing how often and how profoundly
Naoh had violated everything that bond of blood should have represented. “She
knew I was staying with you, Hanjen. And I knew she was watching, listening.”