Dreamfall (17 page)

We’d been viewing what seemed to be endless repetitions of
the same facility for a long time now, and no one seemed to be getting restless
except me. “What about your bondies?” I asked Ling Natasa finally, because no
one else had asked it. “You use contract labor. I saw some workers yesterday,
at the reefs. Do you use them here?”

She turned back, with a look that said she’d almost managed
to forget about me. “Yes,” she murmured. She looked wary, like she kept
expecting me to ask something else. “We use a fair amount of contract labor in
our excavation and extraction operations.”

“Are we going to see that next?” I asked. I glanced at the
Feds. “l expect the FTA wants to see how you treat their property.” If I’d been
a mind reader then, I might have regretted it. But I wasn’t, and she only
nodded. She was the only one looking at me whose stare wouldn’t have registered
fatal on a rad meter, and only because her real concerns were somewhere else
entirely.

We left the experimental labs and took a tube to another
part of the complex. On the way I listened to her voice, more expressionless
than any tape, describing the steps in the process of turning the “wild library”
of the cloud-reefs into something useful and reproducible for Tau to license
out.

Every standard day the operation excavated several thousand
metric tons of reef matrix. That raw material was analyzed, separated, and
processed down to a few cubic centimeters of material that Tau hoped would give
them something unique to human experience.

“How do you make any profit?” I asked Protz. “With installations
like this, and all these workers, for so little 1sssll—”

Protz sent me another radioactive glance. “On the contrary.
One discovery like the hybrid enzyme that gave us ceralloy technology makes
everything we do here worth the effort. Our research is not merely
profitable—it benefits all of humanity.” He smiled, looking away from me at the
Feds. Their expressions didn’t change. He went on smiling anyway.

I glanced at Ling Natasa, thinking that whenever I’d heard a
combine talk about the good of humanity, humanity didn’t seem to extend beyond
their own keiretsu. And thinking about it, I began to wonder again about the
questions that no one had asked here today ... not even me. Protz had said to
ask him anything. I wasn’t naive enough to think he meant it,, but maybe I’d
been naive to think anyone else would listen if I did.

Another tram ride emptied us out into an underground chamber,
the largest space I’d seen yet. This place made my whole head sing; I realized
we must be somewhere in the heart of the reef. Another group of what appeared
to be technicians were waiting, ready to put us into protective gear. I recognized
the field generator someone strapped around my waist, a standard form of the upgraded
suit I’d worn to go reef-diving. Everyone I saw anywhere in the chamber was
wearing one. “They all move like they’re underwater,” I said to Ling Natasa. “Why
do they look like that?”

“It’s a force field,” she said, raising her voice so that
the two Feds could hear her. “This is a particularly fragile area in the matrix.”

I realized that the white noise singing in my head wasn’t
just the presence of the reefs: the entire area was contained inside a force
bubble; accident insurance, so that if the workers hit something unexpected,
they wouldn’t blow up the entire complex. “How many of the workers here ate
contract labor?”

“Most of them, I think,” she said. “The rest ate supervisors—our
technicians and engineers.”

“Why So many contract laborers?” I asked. “Why not more Tau
crtizens? Is it too dangerous? And why no Hyd13n5—?”

“Why don’t you let us ask the questions?” Givechy moved between
us, forcing me to back off.

Ling Natasa looked at him, at me, back at him. “Our own citizens
ate generally too well educated to do menial work,” she said evenly, and went
on looking at him, but answering me. ‘And Tau policy does not permit Hydran
workers in our research and development facilities, because there arls—” she
faltered, and glanced at me, “—sssurity concerns wherever psions are employed.”

Protz cleared his throat. She glanced at him, and I saw a
spark of panic show in her eyes. But the Feds only nodded and didn’t ask
anything more. Osuna looked back at me for too long. I kept my mouth shut, this
time.

We went on through the mining operations zone on foot. I
wondered whether somebody was deliberately trying to wear out the FTA’s
inspectors, take the edge off their attentior, make them give up and turn back
sooner. If they were it wasn’t happening. The Feds went on like drones—as
tireless and as lacking in curiosity. I told myself that they could be querying
their augmentation, recording data, analyzing it, using bioware I couldn’t
sense or see. But maybe they weren’t. I wondered why the guardrails of the
catwalks we climbed looked newer than the metal under my feet. I wondered
whether they’d really hold my weight if I stumbled and fell against them. I
wondered whether everyone in

DKEAMF’ALL / |17

this place would be wearing a protective field, or even have
one, if our backs were turned.

I remembered the Federation Mines, out in the Crab Colonies.
The Mines provided the Human Federation with all the telhassium it needed for
its starships and starport hubs. They’d used contract labor there to dig the
ore, because it was a dangerous, dirty job, forty-five hundred light-years from
anywhere, or the core of a burned-out star. It was simple economics: out there
human lives were worth a lot less than cutting-edge technology.

The FTA ran the Federation Mines, and the FTA policed it,
and when I’d worked there the bondies didn’t wear protective fields or even so
much as a breathing mask to protect them from the radioactive dust that turned
their lungs to shit. Forty-five percent of the laborers who were sent to the
Mines didn’t survive their work contract.

I dropped back as the group moved on, drifting toward one of
the laborers who’d been herded aside to let us pass. “Do you always wear the
field belts?” I asked. “Or is this equipment just for show?”

He looked at me at first as if he didn’t believe I was
actually speaking to him, and then he looked harder at me. I realized he was
looking at my eyes. Hydran eyes. “Get away from me, freak,” he muttered.

Someone caught my arfil, pulling me around: one of the security
guards assigned to keep us together and moving. “Stay away from the workers,”
he said, “unless maybe you’d like to join them.”

“What did you say—?” I whispered, feeling the bottom drop
out of my thoughts.

“He said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but for security reasons we ask
that you stay with the rest of the group.”‘“ Burnell Natasa stepped up beside
us, giving his man a look. He led me away, tight-lipped, and made sure I
rejoined the others. He stayed close to my side after that, not giving me a
chance to lag behind. For a space of heartbeats I was grateful, like I’d just
been dragged back from the edge of a hundred-meter drop.

My gratitude didn’t last long. “This is a farce,” I said. “This
isn’t how things actually are here.”

“What the hell do you want?” he asked, barely audible.

“The truth,” I said.

He glared at me. “NobodY wants the truth.”

“I do.”

“Then maybe you’d better get over fi:== he said sourly, and
looked away again. “Before you hurt anyone else.”

I looked down. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help your son,” I murmured.
“The Hydrans wouldn’t talk to us—”

“Why not?” he asked, with the sharpness of surprise this
time, or paln.

“Because I’m a freak,” I said.

He frowned, and I wasn’t sure whether it was frustration or
simply incomprehension.

“I’m sorry—” I muttered again, my memory opening doors I
didn’t want to step through.

He didn’t say anything, looking ahead to where his wife was
using a multiple-display wall to demonstrate some biochemical process. “She
shouldn’t be here,” he said, not to me but to himself.

“What about you—?” I asked.

He looked at me. “No,” he said.

“Did Tau make you do this?”

He didn’t answer.

The rest of the tour was white noise. Artificial monomole
sky, desolate ranges of machinery for deconstructing the matrix of the reefs,
the entire human-made subterranean world of the interface .... Nothing I saw or
heard could stop the cancerous fear that at a word from Tau I could be made
invisible—that I could disappear into that faceless mass of bondies. And this
time there would be no Jule taMing to find me and save me. My paranoia grew
until there was no coherent emotion left inside me except the need for this to
be over.

I didn’t ask any more questions. No one asked me why.

Bv rhe time Wauno dropped me off at the location where the
team was collecting preliminary data, the workday was nearly over. I waded
through the random motion of bodies and started doing my job. Whispers and
stares followed me. I wondered whether the others had been talking behind my
back all day.

As we finished securing equipment for the night, Wauno’s
transport came down out of the violet air again, limned in gold as it landed on
the river shore.

I finished sealing a container and straightened up, inhaling
the transport’s faint reek of ozone. The hatch opened. I headed toward it with
the others.

The team members made desultory talk on the way back to
Riverton. I didn’t join in, too drained by another day I didn’t want to think
about. Kissindre sat near Wauno, as usual, deep in conversation about the reefs
and the cloud-whales. What I overheard him telling her made more sense than all
the Tau data I’d downloaded into my brain. I wondered again how he’d learned
all that; just tracking clouds wasn’t enough. As we left the transport for the
hotel I almost asked, but I didn’t have the energy.

But as I was heading out he called my name. I looked back,
and he said, “You free tonight?”

I hesitated, wondering why he wanted to know. “yeah,” I said
finally. He gestured me back. I pushed past Kelly, and past Ezra Ditreksen, who’d
come aboard looking for Kissindre.

“You’re invited to dinner,” Wauno said as I leaned against
the control panel next to him. “There’s somebody who wants to meet you ...
somebody you should meet, if you really want to know more about the reefs.”

I barely kept the surprise off of my face. “Where?” I asked.
I’d thought I was going to ask
who?

“Freaktown.”

Something squeezed my lungs shut. I shook my head, turning
away.

“It won’t be like that.” His voice pulled me back.

“Like what?” I said, looking at him.

“Like what Tau did to you.”

I went on staring at him. “Why—” I asked finally.

He looked blank. Then he nodded, like he finally understood
what I’d asked him. “Because I thought someone owed you an apology.”

“Why do you feel that’s your responsibility?”

He touched the frayed pouch that hung on a thong around his
neck. He shrugged. “I guess ... this.” He lifted the bag up, looked at it. I
realized that he always wore it, the way he always wore his lenses: like they’d
become a part of his body.

The pouch was made from animal hide. It was old, so old that
what must have been fur once was worn away completely in places. Ragged fringe
decorated it, and broken patterns of tiny colored beads.

“What is that?” I asked softly.

“A relic. An ... heirloom. My ancestors called it a medicine
pouch. Not like for drug patches,” he said. “spirit medicine. Talismans.
Supposed to keep you safe.” He half smiled, his mouth pinched with irony. “That’s
all I know. Everyone who could tell me more is dead.”

“Where’s it from?”

“Earth,” he said, fingering the broken fringe. “Nordamerica.
A long time ago.”

“You born there?”

He shook his head. “My ancestors have been gone for a long
time.”

He hadn’t said “
gone from there.
”
He’d said “
gone.
”
I looked down at the pouch as he let it drop against his chest.

“What’S happened to the Hydrans ...” He shrugged. “Same
thing. I guess that’s why I keep needing to see what’s across the river. The
same reason you do, maybe.”

I rubbed my face, rubbing away scabs and expression. “I can’t,”
I said. “The Hydrans threw me out. They think I’m the living dead,”

“Not this one.” He shook his head. “This one’s different.”

I realized that I believe him, maybe because I needed to so
much.

“What do you say?” he asked.

I didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then I asked, as if
it didn’t matter, “Just you and me?”

He hesitated. ‘And her.” He nodded toward Kissindre,
standing with Ezra in the back of the transport, inventorying equipment. “Will
she go?” There was something not quite casual in the way he looked at her, like
he was trying not to think about her.

My mouth twitched. “Yeah. I expect so.” I called her name,
and she came forward, her look still registering inventories as she shut down
her cyberlinks and brought her full attention back to us. “Wauno knows a Hydran
who wants to talk about the reefs. He says we’re invited to dinner. You ready
to cross the river?”

“Tonight?” she said, looking at Wauno.

He nodded.

Her face came alive. “I was born ready.” She grinned. “Is
this your informalf—J”

He shrugged. “I guess you could call her that. I usually call
her Grandmother.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s a term of respect and affection,” he said,
straight-faced. “For an elder.”

Her mouth relaxed until she was smiling again. “I absolutely
want to go. I think I speak for both of us—” She glanced at me.

“Of course you do,” Ezra said, materializing behind her. His
expression slid as he caught her talking to Wauno and me. “But what are we
speaking about?”