Dreamfall (32 page)

Miya held her head, looking glazed. She said something to
me, slurring, and I couldn’t make it out. She looked away again, searching
restlessly until she spotted the bundle in someone’s arns that I realized was
Joby. She went to him, unsteadily, and took him into her own arrns.

“They were waiting,” I.{uoh said, her voice hard. “It was a
trap. You were the bait. They thought we wouldn’t know. Miya made a joining
with me, in case this happensd—” She gestured at us, disgusted.

Miya held Joby, forehead to forehead with him, smiling as
their eyes met. I watched them together, tenderness and envy spilling through
my senses like the taste of honey fruit. I looked back at Naoh. “Why’d you brin’
me?” I asked, barely remembering to ask it in Hydran. My speech was starting to
clear up as quickly as it had gone out of control.

Naoh glanced at Miya, as if it hadn’t been her idea, as if
she wanted to hear the reason herself.

“He didn’ know ... was a trap.” Miya pushed the words out of
her mouth like someone spitting stones, and her face was as guarded as her
sister’s. “Coul’n’ leave him to them.” She reached out to touch me, almost
protectively, hesitated, glancing at Naoh.

“Thank you,” I murmured. I put out my hand, catching hold of
hers as she withdrew it.

She looked down at our hands; wonder and desire poured through
the contact point from her mind into mine. I sucked in a breath; my fingers
tightened.

She set her own hand free suddenly, effortlessly. I felt the
aftershock of her self-consciousness as my fingers closed on themselves. ‘6I—I
thought we should learn wha’ Tau said to him,” she murmured, glancing at Naoh
again almost guiltily. She shook her head, worked her face muscles, as though
she didn’t know what was wrong with her mouth.

“Why do we soun’ like we were drugged?” I asked, trying not
to look as lost as I suddenly felt, not able to touch her anymore. It was cold
here in the wind, and I wasn’t wearing my coat.

Miya shook her head again, but this time it was I
don’t
know.

Naoh glanced back and forth between us with a frown. “Miya ...”
she murmured, and there was something both wondering and querulous in her
voice. “He is ... you believe ... this is your
nasheirtah?
Him? The half
breed?” She glanced at me, away again.

“Did you believe you could keep it a secret, once we’d
joined?” Her voice softened almost reluctantly as Miya looked away. Naoh put
her hands on Miya’s shoulders while the others waiting behind her stared at the
three of us, making mental comments that I probably didn’t want to hear.

Miya shook her head, resting her own hands on her sister’s,
but looking at me.

“Miya—?” I murnured, not understanding what was going on
between them or what my part in it was.

“He doesn’t know?” Naoh murmured, looking at me now too. “He
doesn’t even know what that means?” There was astonishment in her voice this
time, and disbelief, even indignation. I couldn’t tell which responses were
intended for Miya and which were aimed at me. “She believes you ate her
nasheirtah,
”
she said to me deliberately. “Her soulmate .... We believe that in a
lifetime there is only one person who is meant to be for each of us. The first
time she met You, she knew ...,” She looked back at her sister. “But you didn’t
tell him.”

Miya wouldn’t look at either of us llow. She could have been
on the other side of the world, for all the sense of her there was in my mind. “Naoh,
stop—” she whispered.

“Miya?” I said again, my own voice faltering as she refused
to meet my eyes. I wondered whether she was ashamed or simply afraid—ashamed to
have the others know the truth, afraid her sister would reject her ... afraid
that I would. “Miya ....” I touched her face gently.

She looked up at me, startled. I saw the look in her eyes,
the fear of finding nothing when my eyes looked back at her. I remembered last
night: falling asleep inside the warm, protected shelter of her body, her mind ...
waking up cold and empty and alone, afraid that I’d wake up cold and empty
forever ....

“I know,” I whispered. “r do ....” I watched the fear change
to relief, and then, uncertainly, into joy. I leaned past Joby’s curious stare
and kissed her; felt the hungry pressure of her lips on mine jump-start the
flow of thought and emotion between us. Joy and terror and longing took my
breath away.

And then Naoh’s psi smashed our mindlink like a hurled rock.
In the split second before I lost contact I felt her shock at encountering my
mind defenseless and online; felt the thorn-thicket of her emotions:
surprise/pain/joy/envy/curiosity/helpless
anger ....

And then all three of us were suddenly alone, blinking like
the daylight was a surprise, as we were dragged neuron by neuron back into the
world we shared with the others.

“‘Wb can’t stay here,” Naoh said sharply, as if that was
really all that had been on her mind. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” I said, my voice still husky. “The Corpses—they’ll
track me. You’re not safe as long as I have this.” I touched my databand. I
remembered how much it had meant to me to finally put one on; what it had cost
me to earn the right to wear one. What life had been like without one.

I turned to Miya, where she stood holding Joby in her affns,
seeing the way she looked at me: “I
colttdn’t leave him,
”
she’d
said. Joby. Or me. I looked away at Tau Rivertoh, searching my mind for a
single thing I’d left undone across the river that had any meaning, compared to
anything that waited to be done over here. Searching it for a single person I’d
shared something with that had any real meaning, compared to what I’d found
with Miya ....

I pressed the thumb-lock on my databand. I caught its weight
in my hand as it dropped off my wrist.

“What are you doing—” Miya said, her voice as incredulous as
any Human’s.

“I can’t wear this anymore,” I said. “Humans killed my
mother because she was Hydran. My father was Human; he left me in the gutter
because I was Hydran. I’m Hydran—!” I pitched the databand away from me as hard
as I could, watched it, and everything it stood for, go spiraling out over the
rim of the canyon, down, down into the bronze waterflow a hundred meters below.
I turned back to Miya’s disbelieving eyes. ‘And you are my nasheirtah.”

The others were all staring at me with the same disbelief,
even Naoh. “Call me Bian,” I said.

Miya pressed her face against my shoulder as I held her, and
Joby, closed in my arrns. “Bian,” she whispered. “WelCome home.” She moved
aside to let Naoh embrace me like a lost brother ... a lost lover. There was a
gentleness in Naoh’s touch that I hadn’t thought she was capable of; something
in her eyes that was haunted but almost tender as she murmured, “Namaste, Bian.
Bring my sister joy. At least one of us should have it forever ....”

I didn’t say anything, couldn’t, as one by one the others
did the same.

Tupy rook me somewhere else, then, before Borosage could
take us all out right where we stood ... before I really had time to think
about the consequences of what I’d done.

I reoriented, supported by Miya and Naoh. We were standing
in a bleak, dusty, run-down space too much like the one I’d visited last night.
Onty the worn blanket in place of a worn rug in the center of the room made me
certain we were actually somewhere else. I rcaltzed then that rooms like this
might be all I saw, how I lived, for the rest of mY life.

I looked back at Miya and realized the thought didn’t even
bother me. I glanced from one face to another, sulrounded by the band of Hydran
outcasts who’d been strangers to me only minutes ago. Now, with the suddenness
of the teleport itself, they’d become my family.

“If you are going to be one of us, you should look like us,
Bian,” Soral said. He shut his eyes as if he was concentrating. Suddenly he was
holding a shirt—one of the long, side-fastened traditional tunics that they
were all wearing, ru.n Miya now. “Here,” he said, and let it go. The shirt rose
into the air and hung above my head. The others watched, grinning and pointing.

I looked up at it, and felt a sudden chill. I looked down
again, startled, and suddenly I wasn’t wearing any shirt; my shirt and Deadeye’s
sweater lay in a heap on the floor at Naoh’s feet. She looked me up and down.
So did the others, with a frank curiosity that told me they’d never seen a
Human naked, or even a half Human half naked. They almost seemed disappointed
that nothing worth mentioning was different from the neck down. I clutched the
top of my pants with both hands. “These stay,” I said, not smiling.

They laughed and nodded, nudging each other. Naoh’s laughter
was high and giddy as the shirt suddenly dropped out of the air onto my head.
It slithered its way down around my neck like something alive.

I pushed my arrns into the sleeves and fastened it, managing
a smile of my own. The tunic’s material was softer and warrner than it looked,
and probably a lot older.

“Namaste,” I said, realizing as I said it that it also meant
“thank you.” Soral bowed slightly to me; I bent my head to him, to them all.

Miya set Joby on the floor at her feet. A pile of blocks and
other toys appeared around him. She pulled the bandana gently from my hair. I
stood motionless, the center of attention but for once not uncomfortable about
it, as her cool fingers lifted my hair off the back of my neck.

Tiene passed her one of the ornate metal clips the others,
both men and women, wore to hold their long hair in an elaborate knot on top of
their heads. The clip hovered in front of my eyes while Miya gathered and
worked with my hair. I couldn’t tell whether she used only her hands to do it.
She reached into the air for the clip, muilnured her satisfaction as I felt her
fasten it.

“There, Bian,” she said, “my nasheirtah.” Her satisfaction
and pleasure were reflected in the faces all around me, in a way that made me
feel there was more to this part of the ritual of transformation than I could
appreciate with only five senses.

A woman named Talan offered me a metal belt. It had been
made out of scrap wire woven intg patterns as subtle as the hair clasps. A man
named Sath gave me a thong necklace with a pendant of carved agate. The others
came forward one by one, offering me a vest, necklaces, rings, a pouch to hang
at my belt== even a coat that was worn but warm, until my transformation into
one of them was comPlete.

we ate stale flatbread and drank steaming black tea, which
Miya called
pon,
while I told them everything: That Sand was gone. That
the Feds might as well be. That Borosage was in ,rrurg”, with no one standing
in his way. That he’d said he would make Freaktown pay; the only question was
how much, how soon.

“Is that all?” Naoh demanded, her usual impatience back and
edged with disappointment. “You said that you could help us, Bian. were all
those things you promised us last night nothing—just talk?” She made
tatk
a
dirty word. She glanced at Miya as she said it, another of those looks I couldn’t
read.

I leaned against the wall, resting my back. “Tau blocked me at
every turn. Even Perrymeade is afraid to stand up for your people now, because
Miya took Joby.” I glanced away, so that I didn’t have to see her expression
change. “Joby doesn’t matter to someone like Borosage—or to the kind of people
who control rau’s government. Maybe they even want him out of the w&],
because Tu,r’s negligence is responsible for what happened to him.”

Joby sat on the floor beside me playing with a scatter of
carved cubes, stacking them up, knocking them down, smiling but silent, like he
always was. Mlya sat beside him. She looked up suddenly over the rim of her cup
and I saw the guilt in her eyes.

“perrymeade’s in trouble with the keiretsu, because hiring
you was his idea,” r said to her as gently as I could. “He’s afraid of losing
everything—so afraid that it’s paralyzing him.” Wanting to take back the words
that made her look at me that way, but not able to leave them unsaid. “If he
had any guts, he’d help us anyway.”

She only shook her head. Joby glanced up at her and started
to whimper. she reached out, touching his face, and he stopped. “He hasn’t
spoken a word since we came here,” she munnured, almost to herself. “He knows
... he knows this is wrong—” Her hands moved in the air, as if they ached to
get ahold of something tangible, something that could put it all right.

Naoh made a disgusted noise. “We can’t give him back, Miya.
Not now. You heard Bian—the Humans don’t even want him back. You know it would
be the end of us.” Her expression changed subtly, in a way that made me uneasy.
“This is only the next turning of the Way. Everything is happening just as it
should. Let Tau do what it wants. Our people act like they are already dead. If
the Humans kill a few of them, the rest will realize hfe is worth something
after all. Then they will join ss—”

“fn doing what?” I asked.

She looked at me. Her mouth thinned, and she didn’t answer. I
had the feeling it wasn’t because she didn’t know. She just wasn’t ready to
share the answer with me.

“Borosage is a sadist,” I said, frownirg. ‘And he’s not
stupid.” I rubbed my naked wrist. “You don’t attack an enemy like that head-on==You’ve
got to drag him down from behind. He’s mean and he’s dirty ... there’s got to
be something he’s hiding. What about the nephase ... the drug Navu’s using.
Where does it come from? Borosage is letting it get uway—”

“No one cares about that,” Naoh snapped. Miya looked up at
her. They locked eyes in another silent exchange, and Miya’s ristless hands
tightened into fists. “It only goes to us,” Naoh said, turning away, “and the
Humans are glad of anything that cripples us mote.”

“He does it himself,” Miya said.

“What?” I raised my head.