Dreamfall (21 page)

“I thought only humans did that,” I said.

He frowned. “No.”

“It wasn’t my choice to attend that meeting,” I said. “Just
so you know.”

“I did not think so.” He shook his head. “You asked why we
don’t just show the radicals what is wrong with their way of seeing. We would,
but they will not let us. They are
klin;
they are ... of one mind. A
closed set to anyone who does not share their beliefs. They have shut us out as
completely as you have—but selfishly.”

I frowned this time. “I thought Hydrans didn’t do that to
each other. I thought they were always sharing their thoughts, their emotions,
with each other, so that there were never any misunderstandings.”

He laughed, but not as if he thought it was funny. “That’s
what we have always wanted to believe ourselves. Maybe it was even true, once,
when our civilization was whole. Or perhaps not even then. But anyway our past
is gone. Now we live in the time of the Humans== and no one really knows what
the truth is anymore.”

I studied my hands, not knowing which frayed end of the conversation
to pick up, or whether I should even try.

He shook his head. ‘There is really nothing else that I can
tell you, or Tau, about the kidnapping, that Tau does not already know. It was
done by HARM, and Tau knows that. But we do not know where they disappear to,
any more than Tau does. There are thousands of hectares of emptiness in the
Homeland. HARM can be anywhere they choose, from moment to moment .... But we
do want to help you find the boy. Please assure Agent Perrymeade that if we
discover anything, we will send
word
—”

I rubbed my neck, feeling as if I’d suddenly stopped
existing, even as a halfbreed with brain damage; that he was only seeing the
Humans’ pawn again. I wondered whether everything he’d said to me had been just
as calculated. I didn’t want to believe that, but I couldn’t prove anything
either way. His mood seemed to settle on me like a weight. I remembered what he’d
said about catching an emotion like a disease. I ought to be immune, if anyone
was. The mood was my own, and it wasn’t going to improve when I left this
place.

I glanced at Grandmother. She was making the smoke spiral
and braid like Hanjen and I were already gone from the room. I wondered if that
was a kind of prayer. I wondered what she was praying for and where she thought
the answers were going to come from.

Hanjen looked at Grandmother too, suddenly, as if she’d said
something. She had—something I couldn’t hear. The thread of smoke drifted up,
undisturbed, as she let it go.

Hanjen got to his feet. He bowed to Grandmother and then to
me. “I must go. It’s a long walk back to town. I hope the rest of your visit to
our world is ... productive.”

I watched him go out, wondering why he was leaving. I suddenly
felt as left out of what went on here as I’d been at the Council meeting.

I looked back at Grandmother, wondering what she’d told him.
Maybe his leaving hadn’t meant anything at all—maybe I just didn’t understand
the way anything happened on this side of the river.

Somebody entered the room. I turned, half expecting to see
Hanjen again. But it was Wauno.

Wauno made his bow to Grandmother, murmured “
Namaste,
”
and looked at me. “You rcady?”

I got up, wondering suddenly if Wauno’s arrival had had anything
to do with Hanjen’s leaving. I looked toward Grandmother, but she only bowed
her head and murmured, “
Namaste,
Bian.”

“
Namaste, oyasin,
”
I said, feeling unanchored
as I said it, lost somewhere between gratitude and frustration. As I followed
Wauno out, I looked back to see the faces of half a dozen children peering at
us from doorways. I wondered again how many Hydrans lived in this place; how
many of them had been mentally listening in on what was said in that room. Half
a hundred of them could have been eavesdropping, and I never would have known.
Realizing that made my skin prickle; made me feel Human.

Maybe Wauno felt the same way. We were in the transport, rising
up into the night, before he said anything. And then it was only, “You want to
go back to the hotel?” Nothing about what I’d thought of Grandmother, or what I’d
thought of dinner ... whether I’d learned anything. I wondered if the look on
my face as we walked out was what had kept him from asking. I wondered if he
was sorry he’d thought of this.

I couldn’t give him any reassurances, because I wasn’t
certain how I felt about it myself. I forced my thoughts back across the river,
remembering where I really belonged. My mouth pulled down as I remembered
Ezra,, the blood on his face, the look on

DKEAMF’ALL / L43

Kissindre’s face and what it was probably going to mean when
I reached the other side. “Do I have a choice?”

Wauno shook his head. “Not really. Not this time of night.”

I checked my databand, surprised as I saw how much time had
passed. “What would you do?”

“Go to sleep,” he said. “I like to get up about five hours
from now.”

I sighed. “How’s Ezra?”

He shrugged. “You broke his nose. I took them to a clinic.”

“Shit ....” I leaned back into the seat, resting my head.

“He had it coming.”

“She’s not going to
...
it that way.” I
remembered the look on Kissindre’s face.

Wauno didn’t say anything.

“How did she seem?” I asked, finally.

“Pretty grim.”

I looked out at the night, at Tau Riverton filling the
darkness below us, sucking me down toward light and order and retribution.

Wnuno lefr me at the hotel. I watched the transport rise
until I lost sight of it in the wash of artificial light. The lamppost I’d
leaned against asked me if I needed anything. I went inside.

Kissindre was sitting in the lobby. She was still wearing
her coat and hat. I stopped when I saw her.

“You broke his nose,” she said.

“I know.” I looked away as her expression registered. “I’m
sorry.” But I wasn’t. And she knew it. I stood there grimacing as if I was
afraid of being hit.

She jerked her head toward the hotel’s bar-and-eatery. “Let’s
talk. In there.” I didn’t figure she was hungry. She wanted neutral ground.

The room was almost empty; there wasn’t a big tourist trade
in Rivertor, and the locals were used to curfews. We settled into a dark
corner, in the false privacy of a booth. Music oozed out of the walls, gentle
and plangent; the kind of music that made you ache inside and hate yourself for
it. I stared at the wall on my right, trying to decide without touching it
whether it was actually wood or just high-quality sim. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Maybe nothing did. I stuck a camph into my mouth and ordered a drink from the
touchboard. A minute later the drink slid out of the wall, answering my
question.

“You use a lot of drugs,” Kissindre said.

I looked up at her, wondering what she meant by that. “I can
handle it,” I said. “It doesn’t affect my work.”

“Why do you need them?”

“Who says I need them?” I took the camph out of my mouth,
looked at it. I picked up the drink and drank it. It tasted weak. I stuck the
camph back into my mouth. There was only one drug that could give me what I
really wanted—give me back my psi. But to let myself use it would be like
walking on broken legs. Her eyes were still on me. I frowned, looking away. “I
like it. So do you.”

She pulled her hat off, rumpling her hair, and opened her
coat. She ordered herself a drink. When it came, she sat looking at it. Finally
she drank it down in one swallow, grimacing. “No, I don’t. But I’m angry—I’m
very angry.” She didn’t sound angry; she sounded tired. She didn’t meet my
eyes. “You could have killed Ezra, hitting him like that.”

“No, I couldn’t,” I said. “I knew what I was doing. Even if
he didn’t.”

She looked up. “You meant to break his nose?”

“I didn’t break his nose,” I said. “He broke his nose.”

I expected her to tell me I was full of shit. Instead she
leaned on her elbows, covering her eyes with her hands. I wondered why she
wouldn’t go on looking at me, whether she was afraid to or just fed up. “Damn
it, nothing has gone the way I wanted it to .... Ever since we got here, it’s
been one damn thing after another, until I can’t think straight.” She looked up
at me, finally. “I hate this.”

I shifted in my seat, not needing her to tell me I’d been
the cause of it. I tried to order another drink; a synthetic voice told me I’d
had enough. “Fuck you too,” I muttered. Kissindre looked up at me again. I
fumbled in my pockets for another camph, found the pack, and pulled it out. It
was empty. I wadded it up and threw it on the table. An invisible hand swept
it, and our empty glasses, into some secret compartment in the imaginary wood
surface. I leaned back, removing my hands from the perfectly clean tabletop.

Kissindre said, “This can’t go on. The whole project will
end up terminated.”

“I know,” I said.

“I know you and Ezra never liked each other. I thought at
least you were intelligent enough to work together on something important
without letting your testosterone poisoning get out of hand. Obviously I was
wrong.” Her hands closed over the table’s edge. “God, I didn’t want this to
happen, but you’re making me do it ... I told Ezra he’s off the project.”

Damn
—I shut my eyes. “What?” I opened them again.

“I told Ezra he’s off the project. He’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Ezra?” I said.

She looked at me the way I’d just looked at her.

“Why him? Why not me? He’s your habit. I’m the one who
caused the trouble with Tau.”

She half frowned. “You weren’t to blame for that,” she said.
“For God’s sake, you were the victim, remember?” She shook her head. ‘And
tonight—Ezra insulted our host, our informant. He couldn’t keep his bigoted
mouth shut for one evening. He—” She looked into my eyes, with their long slit
pupils.
He’d called me a freak.
She pushed loose strands of hair back
from her face, “I feel like I’ve been asleep for years. Like I never really saw
this world, in all my visits here .... And I never really saw him. The truth
was always there; I just didn’t see it.” She looked away, making a pain noise
that tried to pass for a laugh. “I can’t go on pretending I don’t see it.” Her
hands released the tabletop suddenly.

“Listen,” I said, “it makes more sense for me to go, instead
of him. The Tau government hates psions, not—” I broke off, before I said
assholes.

“‘Assholes’?” Her mouth formed something that wasn’t exactly
a smile. I shrugged, looking away. “You were right. That’s what he was. God
damn him—” Her mouth quivered, suddenly.

“Are you doing this for me?” I said. “Don’t. I can take care
of myself.”

“Give me more credit,” she said, handing me back my own
line. “I’m doing it for the project. Because my research needs you more than it
needs a stats quantifier. I can get one of those anywhere. I only picked Ezra
because I thought we wanted to be together—” She broke off again.

“You’ve had fights before. You always get over it. Maybe you
ought to wait, before you—”

She was silent for a moment. “Tell me,” she said, “when the
universe eventually ends, will you feel guilty about that?”

It startled a laugh out of me. “Maybe.”

She half smiled. “‘Well, don’t feel guilty about this. I
always thought Ezra didn’t like you because he was jealous of how easily you
learned things. Of how you looked at me, sometimes—or he said you did, anyway—”
She glanced down, tugging at the end of her single thick braid. “I thought at
least it meant he loved me.”

“You don’t think that’s true?”

“Yes,” she said, and her voice broke. “But I don’t want to
spend the rest of my life lying to myself, so that I can go on loving him.” She
took a deep breath.

We sat looking at each other for a long time, not speaking,
not moving. Finally the voice that had told me I was drunk told us that the bar
was closing for the night.

Kissindre lurched like a startled sleepwalker and got up
from her seat. I followed her out of the bar, neither of us saying anything. We
were the only ones in the lift, going up.

We walked together down the hall, still silent, until I
reached my room. I stopped; she stopped too, glancing on down the hallway. She
looked back at the lift.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I need to get a separate room.” She shook her head, looking
again at the door to the room she’d shared with Ezra, seeing nothing where the
future had been until tonight. Finally she looked at me.

I touched my door; it opened. “You want to come in?”

She looked uncertain, but she nodded. She went ahead of me
into the room. My eyes tracked her motion, even though I tried not to.

I closed the door. She turned back, looking at me as the
door silently shut. I felt the pale room close us in, like a jail cell. The far
wall had long since opaqued for the night. I ordered it to polarize again.

The star-patterned grid of the city filled my eyes. I took a
deep breath, feeling the fist of my tension ease. Kissindre sat down on my bed,
looking out at the view but not reacting. I sat in a chair, feeling the soft
formless seat reshape itself around me. The sensation made me want to get up
again. I made myself go on sitting, remembering the stillness of the Hydrans. “How
long were you and Ezra together?” I asked, when she still didn’t say anything
or do anything.

“I can’t even remember,” she mufinured. She looked back at me,
finally. “We met at the study center in Quarro.”

“You’re from Ardattee?” I said. ‘or thought you were from
Mysena.”

“My family sent me to school in Quarro. They thought it
would give me the best education.” Her smile filled with irony. “Ezra was ss—”
She glanced away. “He was everything Quarro was supposed to be about.
Everything my family admired ... everything I thought I ought to want. And he
wanted
me
... I’d never been wanted like that.” Her gaze turned distant.