Dreamer (17 page)

The bedroom had already raised the temperature to the toasty warmth he preferred upon awakening from the Dream, but a chill suffused his bones. Padric’s room was large and spare, furnished with only a bed, endtable, and wardrobe. Like each room in the rest of his home, this one was a clear dome with, in Padric’s considered opinion, the most beautiful view in the universe.

The estate occupied most of an asteroid, and it consisted of a series of above-ground half-bubbles blown from the rock and sand of the asteroid itself and reinforced with clear polymers. Thick carpets went right up to the edge of the dome, where the floor became the pocked surface of the asteroid. If Padric dimmed the lights, making the dome effectively invisible, it looked as if the room were standing in the middle of a vast desert beneath a soft black sky and steady, shining stars. And the gas giant, of course.

The ringed gas giant, which Padric had named Gem, dominated the heavens, and her rainbow surface was often chased by raging storms large enough to engulf entire planets. Padric’s asteroid currently skated the giant’s icy ring, making it look as if a glittering, blue-white road stretched past the horizon. An entire team of what Padric called his “gardeners” did nothing but scan the asteroid’s projected orbit for ring debris and remove anything that might punch a hole in, or even scratch, the domes. It was terribly expensive, especially when the asteroid’s orbit carried it through the ring itself, but the view was well worth it.

Padric sat tailor-fashion on his bed and drummed his fingers thoughtfully on one thigh. His heart had slowed, but a certain tension remained in his gut. The Dream was becoming more and more dangerous. He would have to arrange a meeting with Dr. Say, and quickly.

The bedroom door opened and a large spider-like being scuttled in. A silver tray was balanced expertly on its back, and the delicious smells of sweet rolls and coffee filled the dome. Padric shivered with Dream cold again and all but snatched the coffee mug off the tray. He sipped the bitter warmth gratefully. The spider, meanwhile, set the tray on the nightstand, then stepped back and waved its forward legs and antennae. Padric, adept at the sign language, didn’t need to activate the translator.

“Will you require anything more, sir?” Chipk, the spider, was asking. He was a Kepaar whose had lost status on his homeworld. Padric had hired him, though Chipk had the unnerving habit of referring to it as “buying my soul.”

“The newest reports about the Dream, please,” Padric replied in his own language. He couldn’t speak Kepaarin—not without multi-jointed legs—but Chipk knew Padric’s language perfectly well. It was an equitable arrangement.

“The news has already been downloaded into the room, sir,” Chipk said, and withdrew.

Padric sipped from the mug again. Although coffee was originally a human discovery, it had taken the ministrations of more evolved races to produce the best results, and Padric’s staff always ordered beans that had never touched human hands or soil.

“Meth-pa,” he said, “news. Text format.”

A holographic veiwscreen obediently appeared in front of him and words scrolled down it. There were several stories about Silent who had been caught in strange accidents or fought terrible monsters. Per Grill, a Silent from Bell Star Station, had nearly been swallowed by a giant worm. A pair of Silent involved in a delicate stock market transaction had been hit by a tornado. They described the whirlwind as “screaming at us.”

Nileeja Vo was dead.

Padric gasped and hurriedly re-read the article. Nileeja Vo was—had been—a field recruiter for Dreamers, Inc. Her husbands had found her dead on her couch, a look of terror on her face. According to the newspaper, she had finished a mail transfer within the Dream, and the other Silent, the one receiving the information, had left the Dream just fine. Moments later, something had killed her Dream form, and her body had quickly followed.

Padric put a bony hand over his mouth as he read. A small bit of sorrow clotted his throat. He had met Nileeja Vo at the same time he had met KellReech. Padric remembered squatting in the filthy camp barrack when a strange being entered, flanked by two guards. The being was short and scaly, with long graceful fingers. It moved through the room, touching each inmate and moving on without speaking. Padric watched in wary fascination until the creature came to him. When its fingers brushed his bare shoulder, a jolt flashed down his spine.

“This one,” the being said.

The guards took Padric by the upper arms and full-blown terror burst upon him. He struggled and fought until one of the guards cracked him across the head with a baton. The world went dark.

When he awoke with an ache in his head and nausea in his stomach, the short creature was standing next to him. It occurred to Padric that he was lying on a bed, a soft one. The creature pressed something against his arm. There was a soft
thump,
and the headache and nausea vanished.

“Who are you?” Padric asked.

The creature smiled with its wide mouth. “My name is KellReech,” it said.

The door opened, and another being walked in. This one was over two meters tall and willowy with enormous black eyes, a shock of wild white hair, and rough brown skin. It carried a food tray. An appetizing smell filled the room and Padric’s mouth watered. He sat up and saw that he was dressed in clean pajamas. His body also felt clean, though he hadn’t bathed in months. The willowy creature set the tray in Padric’s lap. He instantly shoveled food into his mouth, not even stopping to examine or taste it.

“This is my colleague Nileeja Vo,” KellReech said. “And we represent Dreamers, Inc.”

While Padric bolted his food, KellReech explained further. New Prague, Padric’s planet, had been invaded and taken over by the One World Regime without any formal declaration of war. New Prague was now an official protectorate of the Regime, and random segments of its population were alternately enslaved or put into the work camps. That much Padric knew, though he didn’t stop eating long enough to say so.

KellReech went on to explain that Dreamers, Inc. was a separate entity, a private corporation that provided Dream communication at competitive prices to anyone who had the means to pay for it. Dreamers, Inc. was always on the lookout for more Silent, and they had bribed the regeant of the camp for the privilege of combing the inmates for any Silent the Regime might have missed. They had found Padric.

Padric took a long pull from a large glass of milk, though he listened carefully to every word. There would be a catch somewhere, he was certain of it. In the camps, no one did anything for free.

Nileeja sat on the foot of Padric’s bed, and he spared enough attention to see what his surroundings were. He was in a small room with metal walls and a carpeted floor. A ship? The room contained only his bed, an endtable, and a single chair. Nileeja smelled faintly like crushed grass.

“You to be free now, Padric,” Nileeja said in a soft, soothing voice. “This mean you to have choices. You to tell us you to want walk away right now, and we to take you wherever you want to go. No obligation. Or you to join Dreamers, Inc.”

She went on to explain that Dreamers, Inc. would train Padric to use his Silence at their extensive and highly-advanced facility, though not for free. Upon completion of his training, he could either work for Dreamers, Inc. with living costs paid and salary going to pay off debts, or he could strike out on his own and give a portion of his earnings to Dreamers, Inc. until the debt was paid.

Padric sucked crumbs off his fingertips and promptly chose to join. What other choice did he have? KellReech and Nileeja Vo nodded their approval and told him to sleep.

Padric later learned there were no other humans aboard the
Quiet Dreamer,
though there were a dozen other aliens, all different, all Silent. The
Dreamer
was on a long-term recruiting mission and wouldn’t return to headquarters for several months. During that time, it became obvious that something had to be done about Padric. He suffered terrible nightmares. He stole from the crew and new recruits. He told lies, and once he even set fire to his mattress. Eventually, KellReech started meeting with him on a daily basis to talk. Padric later learned that KellReech had been reading books on human psychology, though she admitted to Nileeja that some of it was hard to grasp. Still, she did her best.

“Of course,” KellReech said during one session. “You are angry. You are in pain from what your fellow humans did to you. You hate them for it, and you hate yourself.”

At first, Padric didn’t want to talk to her at all, and KellReech wisely did not threaten to withdraw Dreamers, Inc.’s offer if he didn’t behave. Eventually, after much coaxing, Padric did talk to her. He told her about the camps and the guards, talked about how he had stolen from other inmates and informed on some of them to get better treatment for himself.

“You feel guilty about what you did,” KellReech said. “But the urge to survive is a strong instinct among humans. You did what you had to do, and it’s normal to feel guilt and hatred. It’s normal to hate yourself and other humans.”

When the ship reached the moon that served as the headquarters for Dreamers, Inc., Padric’s training began. Once he finished, Padric elected to go freelance and send a portion of his wages back to Dreamers to pay off the debts and interest incurred by his rescue and training, but he still retained several contacts with the company, including KellReech. He had fallen out of touch with Nileeja Vo, however, and hadn’t laid eyes on her in over thirty years.

Now she was dead.

Sorrow washed over Padric. He sat silent for a moment, then ordered the computer to make a sizeable donation in her name to whatever charity Nileeja’s family might deem appropriate. The computer would route the order to Padric’s own team of Silent, who would go into the Dream, contact his bank—literally Padric’s bank—and authorize them to transfer the funds to a bank on Nileeja’s world. The Silent who worked for Padric’s bank would contact the Silent who worked for the bank on Nileeja’s world, and they would accept the transfer. Padric’s bank would deduct the amount of money from his account, and the other bank would add the amount to theirs. Transaction completed.

Padric, meanwhile, still on his bed, swallowed his sorrow a bit more easily that he thought he should. On the other hand, he hadn’t seen Nileeja Vo in three decades. With a heavy sigh he turned back to the news. Several articles mentioned the blackness. Dreamers, Inc. and the Children of Irfan, among others, had declared the situation a full-blown emergency and had set task forces to studying the problem. Padric reached thoughtfully for a sweet roll. If this was indeed the result of the project, he would need to keep the fact under wraps for a while longer. Maybe he could put some quiet pressure on Dreamers, Inc. to slow their investigation. The Children of Irfan would be harder to deal with, but he’d come up with something.

Meanwhile, he needed more information.

“Meth-pa,” he said, “search for ‘Empire of Human Unity’ or ‘Unity,’ capital
u,
and ‘Silent,’ capital
s.
Exclude news released by the Empire of Human Unity itself.”

“No matches,” the computer reported.

“Meth-pa, search for names ‘Sejal’ and ‘Araceil Rymar.’ Include Unity news releases.”

“No matches.”

Padric nodded. These were telling facts. The Unity was keeping its mouth shut about Araceil and Sejal. That either meant the boy was so worthless he wasn’t worth mentioning or that he was so valuable, the Unity didn’t want word of his existence to leak out. Considering what Araceil had said, Padric took the latter point of view. Now Sejal, this valuable resource, was free and at large. Padric would have paid serious money to see the expression on Unity Premier Yuganovi’s face when he learned a ragtag bunch of monks had gotten the better of him.

Another sip of coffee, and some of the chill left Padric’s bones. Sejal was an incalculably valuable asset to whoever controlled him. Besides, if one project failed, it was best to have another.

“Meth-pa, begin transcript of Dream session. Label ‘Sejal’ and cross-reference by date and time.”

“Recording.”

Padric set down his coffee, took a deep, calming breath, and slipped into a light trance. Word for word, he dictated the conversation he had overheard between Araceil and the messenger to Empress Kan maja Kalii.

“Meth-pa,” he said when he was done, “how long would it take my slipship to reach the planet Bellerophon?”

“Approximately six days, two hours.”

And Sejal would reach Bellerophon in eleven days. That gave him five days to plan. Padric picked up his cup, which had kept the coffee hot for him, took a sip, and quite literally stared into space.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PLANET RUST

You’ll never find it if you don’t look.

—Maternal proverb

Vidya Vajhur stared through the grimy window. A pocked, gray aerogel wall was the only view, but she didn’t really see it.

She had failed. All the visions, the work, the planning. Failed. Sejal had fallen victim to the same fate as Prasad, Katsu, and her two baby boys. They’d all been sucked up by the merciless Unity city. True, Sejal was still alive, was still out there somewhere on a world called Bellerophon. But he had first been sold, used, chewed up by the slums. The proof lay in his words and in the coins that lay heavy in her pocket.

He is a prostitute.

The blunt, hateful words were burned indelibly into her brain. Those words were why she couldn’t go with the monks to Bellerophon. Vidya needed time away from Sejal. Whenver she looked at him after hearing that terrible sentence, Vidya could only see Sejal in bed with...women? Men? Both? She didn’t want to know. Perhaps once she had been apart from Sejal long enough to start missing him, the images would change. But now she couldn’t bear to look at him.

Vidya forced the images away. The room was stuffy and smelled of dust, but Vidya hadn’t been able to open the window. Conversations from neighboring rooms filtered in through the thin walls. Mounted on the wall was an ancient terminal that, after some coaxing, grudgingly produced a newscast. Vidya skimmed it, looking for news of Sejal and the Children of Irfan. Nothing so far. Vidya allowed herself a small sigh of relief.

After bidding Sejal good-bye, Vidya had gone home only to be stopped at the guard station outside the neighborhood. Enyi, the neighborhood guard, had warned Vidya that two Unity guard were waiting for her in the apartment. They were doubtless looking for Sejal.

Kicking herself for not realizing this would happen, Vidya had gone to the apartment building across the street and set watch from the lobby. Less than two hours later, two Unity guard left her building and hurried away. Vidya’s heart lurched. If they were leaving, Sejal had obviously been located, but there was no way to know if he had escaped or been captured. Trying not to think about the latter possibility, Vidya dashed across to her apartment and went into Sejal’s closet. The knot and loose floorboard were exactly where he had said they would be. She pulled up the board and fished out a small cloth bag. It was heavy with
kesh.

Vidya didn’t stop to count it or think about where it had come from. Instead, she flung clothes, toiletries, and a few other items into a carryall and left. She’d told the startled gate guard that she didn’t know when—or if—she would be back. Then she hurried away, putting failure behind her.

Now in the stuffy hotel room, Vidya flicked off the terminal. If Sejal and the Children of Irfan had been captured or killed, the news would have been full of the story so everyone would see the futility of defying the Unity. The lack of news meant they had escaped.

Vidya knew she herself could probably never go back to the neighborhood. The Unity guard would want to question her, see if she knew where Sejal had gone. Vidya, however, had no intention of letting the Unity get its hands on her again.

Taking a deep breath, Vidya dumped the coins out on the bed and counted them. Over two thousand
kesh.
A small fortune. A whore’s wages. Suddenly Vidya wanted nothing to do with the money and she was seized with an impulse to throw it away. Then practicality intervened. She would need money to live on and to get away from Rust. If she were careful, two thousand
kesh
would let her eat for two weeks and maybe still have enough to bribe passage off Rust.

But first she needed some questions answered.

Vidya rummaged through the carryall and removed a wide scarf that she expertly twisted into a loose hood around her head. It was a minimal disguise, but she doubted the guard would be looking for her that hard. Sejal was clearly gone, so there was no need to scour the streets for him. There was almost certainly a warrant out for Vidya’s arrest. But it was doubtful the guard would conduct house-to-house searches or cordon off streets. As long as she avoided showing her face and paid hard currency for her purchases, she should be all right.

Tucking the energy whip into her pocket, Vidya left the hotel and gratefully inhaled the fresh night air. Salt breezes mixed with the scent of old plankton, and an overwhelming sense of deja vu stole over her. For a moment she was seventeen years younger, her husband and daughter were newly missing, and she was looking for someone who could ensure the baby growing in her womb would not be Silent, would not disappear. She had failed at that, too. But that was then. Eighteen years of forging a new neighborhood and battling Unity bureaucracy had given her skills and contacts she hadn’t possessed before, and she was more adept at dealing with people. First she would find the genegineer who had altered Sejal. Vidya had been too young, too grateful to ask specific questions before. But that, too, was then.

Vidya squared her shoulders and strode off into the night.

A data pad clattered to the kitchen table. The screen glowed serenely, indifferent to the rough treatment, and the black letters of the message continued to march across the clear plastic. Prasad Vajhur steepled brown fingers beneath his chin. He had known this day would come. It had been inevitable. A part of him, however, had put off thinking about it, hoping it wouldn’t happen. Now he wished he had ignored that particular fantasy and thought about what to do when he had had more time to plan.

Prasad left the pad where he had tossed it. He wandered out of the tiny kitchen, through the equally tiny living room, and down the corridor toward the bedrooms. Prasad commanded a two-bedroom apartment with a den—luxurious quarters on a base where space was at a premium, but that had been part of the deal. Prasad had definitely had his fill of cramped living quarters.

He eased open the door to the first bedroom and peeped inside. A figure lay curled up under the blankets, breathing heavily in sleep. Night-black hair spilled over the pillow and hung over the edge of the bed. The walls were lined with aquariums of varying sizes, and a rainbow assortment of fish darted, floated, or lazed about their tanks. The soft burble of water and steady hum of filters filled the room.

The door squeaked slightly under Prasad’s hand. Prasad tensed, then shook his head with a small smile. He could smash a dozen ceramic plates against the wall and Katsu wouldn’t waken, and that was assuming her sleep was normal. When she was in the Dream, Prasad could probably set off a small explosive and she would never notice. Other Silent could be jolted out of the Dream with the proper physical stimulus but not his Katsu. For the hundredth time he wondered if he should speak to her about that. In the last few months, Katsu had been spending more and more time in the Dream. He didn’t know what to make of it, and it worried him.

Prasad closed the door, went back to the living room, and stared out one of the small round windows. At this time of day it showed nothing but blackness. Prasad tapped a button next to the glass and a floodlight instantly illuminated the immediate area outside. Half a dozen colorful fruit-fish froze, their fins splayed out in fear. Then they fled into the dark depths. Prasad stared at the bed of red kelp and peat that framed his window and carpeted the ocean floor as far as the floodlight reached. The base was hidden under a peat-covered pile of rock, meaning windows were few and carefully hidden. The fact that Prasad and Katsu’s apartment had three of them showed his importance to the project.

At times like this Prasad longed for the days before the Annexation, when he and Vidya took long walks together in the balmy night air. Katsu had grown up completely indoors. An arboretum was no substitute for real weather and wind. Prasad also feared Katsu was lonely, though she had never complained. The only people her age on the station were definitely not suitable companionship.

And now the researchers wanted to harvest her eggs.

Prasad leaned against the cool glass. Soft currents rippled the waving kelp. At times like this he missed Vidya so much it was a physical pain. The worst was not knowing what had happened to her. Was she even alive?

Prasad shut the floodlight off and turned away from the window. He felt restless. Although it was full night, he left the apartment and wandered up the empty corridor.

All the corridors were painted in bright, cheery colors. Murals and holograms in strategic places gave the illusion of space, and both were changed erratically to ease some of the day-to-day monotony. The base itself was a nest of domes and corridors that snaked in all directions. The layout followed no definite pattern, which had initially confused Prasad, but also served to keep monotony at arm’s length. And after seventeen years and a fair amount of silver hairs, Prasad knew every step. His footsteps were hushed by carpet, and the only sound was the faint creaking of ceramic bulkheads as they expanded and contracted under fluctuations in water temperature and density. Prasad ambled aimlessly, not really paying attention to where he was going.

A few minutes’ walk up several corridors and down two staircases brought Prasad to a door labeled
Project Lab: Authorized Personnel Only.
Prasad hesitated. He had more or less intended to visit the arboretum. His feet, however, had lead him here. Hesitantly, he touched his thumb to the plate mounted next to the door.

“Authorization accepted,” said the computer. “Good evening, Mr. Vajhur.”

Prasad stepped inside. Unlike the base itself, the lab was laid out more sensibly—a small grid of offices at the front, larger grid of locker rooms and labs behind them, and the Nursery behind that. Prasad passed his office and the laboratory area. Several of the lab doors were actually airlocks that bore such labels as “Bio-Hazard,” “Anti-Viral Protocols in Effect,” and “Clean-Suits Required for Entry.”

Prasad continued back to the Nursery. The door was triple-locked and fully a meter thick. He stared at it for a moment, then pressed his thumb to the plate and held it there. He heard the customary tiny hiss.

“Thumbprint and DNA verified,” said the computer. “Welcome, Mr. Vajhur.”

With a soft hum, the locks disengaged and the door swung open. Beyond lay a single long corridor. Prasad stepped inside and the door swung shut again.

The word “nursery” always conjured up wooden cradles, colorful books, and smiling rocking horses in Prasad’s mind. The Nursery, however, thoroughly failed to live up to this image. A main corridor, gray and uncarpeted, branched into several rooms. Prasad glanced into the first. A clear plastic barrier broken only by another heavy door divided the room in two. Four bassinets lined the wall on the other side of the barrier along with a changing table stocked with diapers and other infant supplies. No decorations or pictures graced the stark gray walls. No toys took up space beneath the beds. Instead, a cryo-unit lay below each, ready to receive the child in case of an emergency such as a bulkhead breach.

A collared slave woman sat in a rocking chair with a white bundle in her lap and a bottle in her hand. Prasad nodded to her, and she nodded back. He gestured at the bundle. The slave, who was in her late forties and dressed in a bright orange coverall, gently disengaged the bottle and held up the baby.

It looked perfectly normal for a newborn, though Prasad knew better. Somewhere in the lab’s network computer lay more information on that baby and its nursery-mates than on any other humans in history—DNA, RNA sequencing patterns, mitochondrial structure, brain development, source of DNA. Prasad would never, ever look up that information. He didn’t need it to perform his job, and he didn’t want to know which of the children had sprung from him.

The baby opened its mouth in protest at the interrupted feeding. The barrier woud have kept Prasad from hearing anything if there had been anything to hear. These babies never made a sound when they cried. The slave brought the infant back to her lap and plied the little bottle. Prasad moved on.

Further down the corridor was another room-and-barrier combination, though this one had five hospital beds in it with the side-rails raised. Toddler-sized bundles made lumps under the sheets, and Prasad had to look closely to see the motion of their breathing. Another female slave dozed in another rocking chair. A large medical supply cupboard lined the back wall, and various pieces of medical equipment lay waiting in the corners.

Prasad continued down the cool corridor, footsteps echoing slightly. At this hour no one bustled about. Dr. Say and Dr. Kri were almost certainly in bed, probably together. They pretended that there was nothing between them, of course, but everyone knew. The only ones up and on duty were the Nursery slaves. Prasad had initially been startled at the presence of slaves. Dr. Say, however, had explained that they could tell only as few people as possible about the lab’s location. Free people such as Prasad often had families and they wanted much higher payment to stay on an underwater base for months at a time. Slaves, however, cost the same whether they worked above the water or under it, and they didn’t have to be given time away from base. Shock collars ensured they didn’t revolt, and even if they did, there was no place for them to go unless they could hotwire a submarine.

Prasad’s feet carried him past four more rooms containing barrier, beds, and nurse, then halted at the last room of the Nursery corridor. With a grimace, Prasad realized this was where he had been intending to come all along. This room was the largest yet, with eighteen occupied beds. Five slaves, burly and muscular, stood careful guard. The black-haired figures on the beds were strapped in. Atrophied muscles and tendons shortened from disuse made their limbs thin and withered-looking, with claw-like hands that curled under their chins. The fingers twitched like epileptic insects. Prasad stared at them, expressionless, and even as he watched, one of the children opened its eyes. Its head and shoulders came forward as far as the straps would allow, and its mouth twisted open. The neck spasmed, jerking the head about, and a dark tongue quivered between stretched lips. Saliva dribbled down its chin. The barrier was sound-proofed, though Prasad knew that despite the fact that the child looked like it was screaming, it was absolutely silent.