Dreamfall (61 page)

“I am her conscience, Hanjen,” Naoh said. ‘And yours.” She
looked away again at Ronin and the others, her eyes avoiding me. “Is this
really the man you expect to save you—?”
When I couldn’t.
Her eyes
finished the thought. “This pitiful, braindead Human?”

Ronin stiffened, like the verbal slap had stung his courage
back to life. “I may not seem like much alone ... Naoh,” he said, meeting her
stare. He gestured at his ruined uniform. “But I am not alone ... and I’m not
powerless. Tau’s negligence killed the three other people who came with me—” He
broke off. “But they didn’t kill me. I’m going to make them regret that. There’s
a Federation Transport Authority embargo-class ship in planetary orbit above
Refuge. I have more than enough reason to contact them. I want to do everything
I can to help your people, &S well as protect our contract laborers, if you
can give me enough good reasons.”

“How will you contact the ship?” I asked, remembering that
we’d made him leave his databand behind.

“There’s a special transmitter on my databand. We all have
them, we call it the ‘deadman swifgh’—” He broke off again, as what must have
been a sardonic joke for too long suddenly wasn’t funny. “ft ... if it isn’t
reset on a regular schedule, it automatically contacts the ship. They’ll assume
the worst, and notify the home office—and Draco, in this case. In the meantime,
they’ll send down their tactical enforcement unit: sanctions will be imposed
immediately. All shipping schedules will be on hold until the situation is
resolved to the FTA’s satisfaction.” There was a reason why Tau, and even
Draco, were afraid of the FTA when it was doing its job.

Just speaking the words gave Ronin strength, the way hearing
them changed the faces of everyone listening—including Naoh.

“Naoh,” Miya said, and I felt her praying that there was
still something rational and reachable inside her sister’s mind. “This is

DKEAMF’ALL I 4Ol the last chance our people have for the
future we tried to give them. Even Hanjen understands the Way we were meant to
follow now.” She was still speaking Standard, like she wanted Ronin to follow
it.

“What do you mean?” Naoh demanded, frowning.

Miya glanced at me. “Out in the Homeland, Bian showed me how
our Gift binds us to the an lin, to this world.” Naoh’s frown deepened, and I
looked at Miya in surprise.

She went on, inside our heads this time; I felt her relief
as she released herself from words. She showed me how my unthinking question—
What
if the an lirr came back?
—had entered her thoughts like a grain of sand;
how what had begun as a painful reminder of loss had become layered with
possibilities, until at last she had offered Hanjen a pearl of insight, a gift
of hope: the possibility that if the Community could regain their symbiosis
with the an lirr, they could rekindle their sense of worth as a people. With
Ronin’s support, Tau could be forced to stop manipulating the cloud-whales’
migrations ....

Miya paused,. searching for some detail she hadn’t shown her
sister yet, the thing that would tip the scales of belief. “Naoh,” I said, not
sure why I was even trying to filI the silence, after what Naoh had done to me.
Except that Miya had suffered enough, and I loved Miya more than I’d ever hate
her sister .... ‘At Tau’s mining interface my Gift let me read the reefs in
ways that Humans can’t. They miss incredible things in the matrix without psi
to guide them. It made me ... valuable to them. It helped keep me alive. If it’s
valuable to them, it can be valuable to the Community. It’s something we have
that they want. We can use that—”

“They will never trust us enough.” Naoh shook her head, but
at least she acknowledged me.

I shrugged. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned living with Humans,
it’s ‘Never underestimate the power of greed.”‘“ I gestured at Ronin. “Show
Ronin the truth, the way you showed it to me once. Let him see exactly what
your people—our people—need.” I remembered my nightmare tour of Freaktown, its
medical center, the back-alley drug hole where I’d met Navu. ‘And then let him
help us get it.”

“Navu,” Miya said, falling back into Hydran as she caught
the echo in my thoughts. “We can get him the kind of help he needs; we can get
the Humans’ drugs off our streets—”

“It’s too late,” Naoh said, her voice flat. “Navu is dead.”

Miya made a sound as if someone had hit her in the stomach,
and Joby whimpered. “
Oh, God,
”
she breathed, the Human words
falling from her lips into a fractured silence. “How? Why—?”

“Because the supply of drugs stopped, with everything else,
until Hanjen gave you up to the HumarS,” Naoh said, her voice corroded by
grief. “He couldn’t live without it, with what he had to
feeL
He ... he
stopped his own heart. And you caused it! It was your fault—you and that
half-Human mebtaku!” Tears spilled out of her eyes, down her face. “If you
wanted so much to be Human, Miya, why not just use the drugs? Then the only
life you ruined would have been your own!”

“And would you have been happy to sell them to me too?” Miya
asked, with sudden anger. I felt her compassion shrivel and die. Joby gave a
small squeak as she held him too close. “I never worked for Humans because I
thought they were better than I was! I did it because I believed in
us ...
and
that both our peoples had Gifts to share.”

Naoh stiffened; so did Hanjen, across the room. For a moment
Naoh wavered, as the words ripped open her denial and left her staring at the
truth. She shook her head, but she was just shaking off the temptation to let
herself believe anything we’d said. She didn’t bother to argue Miya’s point or
even defend herself against it. She looked at Ronrn again. “I’ll be watching
what you do,” she said in Standard. ‘And if it isn’t enough—” She disappeared,
leaving the threat hanging unfinished in the air.

The Humans in the room, and probably the Hydrans, let out a
collective held breath.

“What did she mean?” Ronin asked, frowning. s he actually
dangerous?” He looked at Hanjen.

“Naoh ....” Hanjen gestured at his head, still stunned, as
if after learning about her drug dealing he’d forgotten the words to explain
mental illness in Standard. “She can do no real harm without harming herself.”

I thought again about what she’d done with her rabble-rousing;
what she’d done to me. But looking at Miya, I didn’t press the point.

Perrymeade turned to Ronin finally and said, “You’ll be safe
here ... as safe as anywhere on the planet. We have to get back across the
river, before someone misses us.” He glanced at

Kissindre and Wauno, back at Ronin’s uncertain face. “Hanjen
and Miya and Cat are the best informants you’ll find on the problems of the
Hydran Community. They can explain all the things that I ... that I just never
understood.” He looked down.

Miya set Joby down; urged him to cross the room to Perrymeade,
slow step by slow step. I felt the effort of her concentration as she guided
him. Perrymeade kneeled down and took Joby into his arms.

“I-Incle Janos,” Joby munnured, the words lisped but perfectly
clear. He rested his head on Perrymeade’s shoulder, hugging him.

Perrymeade looked up at Miya, his mind overflowing with
tenderness/apologyfloss/gratitude,
until even his face was too painful to look at. “Take care of him,” he
murrnured. “I know you’Il take good care of him. Until it’s safe for all of you
to come back across the river.”

Miya nodded, her own face full of compassion.

Kissindre moved almost hesitantly to her uncle’s side. She
touched Joby’s dark hair with a gentle hand. Joby glanced up, and they both
smiled. She moved back again as Perrymeade released Joby from his arms,
muffnuring a good-bye as his nephew started back toward Miya.

Kissindre and Perrymeade followed Joby with their eyes,
until they were both looking at Miya, at me, at the way we were standing
together, touching each other.

I met Kissindre’s clear blue stare, wishing I could look
away from it. “I’m soffy, Kiss ...” I murrnured, not able to tell her what I
felt, not able to show her either; not like this.

But she smiled and finished a trajectory back to Wauno’s
side. He put his arm around her and grinned, shrugging. “It’s all right,” she
said, smiling up at him, and back at me. “sometimes things actually do work
out.”

I felt a smile of relief come out on my face, the fist of my
thoughts loosened until I could share them again with Miya. I felt her
curiosity settle on the surface of my mind; but she only picked Joby up again
and didn’t ask me any questions.

Wauno led the others out the way they’d come in. Ronin
watched them go, watched us stay behind, with a lot less wariness than he would
have shown five minutes before. I wondered if he’d finally come to see that we
really did have something in common.

But as the room emptied, leaving the five of us to awkward silence,
exhaustion smothered his thoughts like a pillow.

Hanjen moved to his side, filling the void left by the
others’ departure. He seemed to feel Ronin’s exhaustion as deeply as Ronin did;
or maybe he was just that exhausted himself. He and Miya were both wearing
long, shapeless tunics that must be sleep shirts. I tealized that it had to be
near dawn. The day Ronin and I had just been through must have been the longest
day of his life. And probably the worst. He sagged forward on the cushioned
seat, resting his head in his hands.

Hanjen touched Ronin’s shoulder, quietly urging him to lie
down and rest, telling him that there would be time enough to discuss
injustice, and to grieve, tomoffow; but it was time for all of us to rest, no’tv
....

There was a subliminal psi touch buried in the comforting
words; he was using his psi to plant suggestions of healing and calm and
reassurance. I knew that kind of subtle touch, what it could do, how much it
could mean .... I wondered how often he’d used it in his work as an ombudsman.
As far as I knew he didn’t use it when he was negotiating with Humans. I
wondered whether this was the first time he’d ever met—or had to enter the mind
of—a Human whose emotions had been stripped raw.

I glanced at Miya as something wistful and almost forlorn
whispered through my thoughts. She watched Ronin lie down where he was and
Hanjen cover him with a blanket; I shared her memory of a time long ago when
her own loss had been as fresh, and Hanjen had given her the same comfort, with
a touch and a thought that were kindness itself .... She held Joby tighter,
stroking his hair, murmuring something I couldn’t quite make out. It sounded
like a song, or maybe a prayer.

Hanjen straightened up again. He looked at us standing together
and smiled. I didn’t know if he was smiling at the sight of us together or just
at the proof that he hadn’t sold his soul to the Humans after all. “The Way has
brought us safely home,” he murnured. “We should rest now—while we have a
resting place.” He yawned, as if he’d convinced himself at least that the rest
was long overdue. He went off in the direction of his room without speaking,
leaving a kind of benediction in our minds.

Miya led me into the room where she’d been sleeping—the room
I’d slept in once. I wondered whether she’d known that.

(Yes,) she thought, and when I looked at her, there were
tears in her eyes.

I bit my lip, wanting to hold her, but waited while she
settled Joby into one of the hammocks suspended halfway between the ceiling and
floor. She rocked him gently, humming a tune I felt as much as heard, soothing
him to sleep.

I stood looking at the other hammock, remembering how I’d
spent my only night in this room sleeping on the floor. I suddenly felt an
exhaustion that made the way I’d felt earlier seem like a good night’s sleep.

Miya moved away from Joby’s hammock and put her affns around
me. She kissed me like she’d known—
must have known
—what I’d been
wanting, aching for .... My fatigue vanished like a shadow in the sun. I felt
giddy, like gravity had stopped, and we were rising into the ai’r ....

We were.
I realized, with the fraction of my mind
that was still halfway coherent, that we were slowly rising, spiraling upward,
drifting toward the second hammock together. Miya settled us into its yielding
crescent. Our bodies set it rocking gently as we began to touch and kiss and
maneuver into position, sinking deeper into need and pleasure, into each other’s
bodies and minds and souls ....

After a long while with no coherent thought at all, only
sensation, we lay quiet again in the hammock’s soft embrace. After a longer
time, I thought, (Miya, what you told Naoh, about the an lirr: that if they
returned, it could be the key to the Community’s survival ... I gave You that
idea?)

She nodded without moving. (Sometimes it takes an outsider’s
eye to see what no one sees clearly from the inside—)

Pain caught in mY chest.

(What—?) Miya thought, as.fu pain impaled us both.

(Outsider,) I thought, and without wanting to, (mebtaku.)

(Bian.) She touched my cheek gently. (No Human ever had that
insight either, in all the years they’ve mined the reefs, in all the time since
they came here. No one without the Gift could have had it.) Her fingers traced
the not-quite-Human, not-quite-Hydran contours of my face. (Did it honestly
never occur to you, nasheirtatr,)

she thought, (that you might be something better than either
one?)

“MiYa—”

Her fingers touched my lips, silencing me. (When I shared
your mind that night I first saw you ... that was the first time I really
believed
Humans and the Community could trust each other, at least enough so that we
could share this world in peace. And I thought, if only there was something
that could make all of them see this world like you do ... like we do ...) The
words dissolved into images of the monastery, the reefs, the secrets of the
Hydran past that we’d explored together. (I’d always wanted to believe our
peoples could find a common ground .... No one but you ever made it seem
possible to me.) She pictured the future unfolding as it should:
(We were
together now, the Way had ted me back to her and Joby back to us.)
She saw
us together at the monastety, the shue where the an lirr had thought about
healiilg, where now we would have the time we needed to heal ourselves ....
(Everything will be all right now.)