Dreamfall (35 page)

The boat came to a gentle stop, nudging a shore that was
only a denser shadow emerging from the fog-gray mystery of the water.

Miya climbed out of the boat. I helped her pull it up onto
the beach. River pebbles crunched under my feet, solid and reassuring. I could
make out the dim furrows left by other boats on the stony shore. I wondered why
the Hydrans chose to enter their holy place this wa1l, when all they had to do
was think themselves here. Then I remembered Hanjen telling me why he’d walked
all the way from town to see Grandmother:
Respect. Humility.

Miya drifted away along the shore as if she’d forgotten I
was with her, or forgotten that I couldn’t read her mind unless she let me. I
wondered whether the reef-rapture that was turning my thoughts to fog had hold
of her too, in a way I couldn’t imagine. I followed her, forcing my body to
make the effort to catch up. She seemed to know where we were going; I didn’t
see any choice except to follow.

As we went or, the fogged, stagnant air grew clearer and
brighter. Looking up I saw tiny sparks of light begin to show, winking on one
after another, somewhere inside the masses of phosphorescent growths high above
us. I wondered whether the lights were something alive, a life-form adapted to
this endless night, or some manifestation of the reef matrix itself .... Or whether
maybe I’d begun to hallucinate.

When Miya finally stopped moving, I looked down again. We
were standing on what seemed to be an island in a lake of fog. I hadn’t felt us
walk through water. I looked back the way we’d come, telling myself that we couldn’t
have walked on the water, either. I glanced at Miya. Her face was clenched like
a fist, as if she was struggling against something—the power of the reef, or
something darker—inside herself.

In front of us on the ground lay a knee-deep pile of artifacts;
things dropped there by Human—or probably Hydran—hands. They must have been
brought to this place by past seekers. I wondered what the ones who’d left them
had come here in search of, whether they’d believed their offering was the
thing that would get them what they needed or if it had only been a personal
gesture, with a meaning no one else would ever understand.

Miya stooped down, picking up something from a pile that
could have been centuries—or even millennia-old. Some of the artifacts looked
like nothing I’d ever seen, things from a time before Humans had come to this
world, when the machinery of Hydran daily life had run on energy channeled by
the mind. Some of them just looked like junk, the fallout of everyday life in a
Human city, castoffs from the world across the river. I nudged a piece of scrap
metal; it canted over, crushing a bouquet of flowers that I’d thought at first
were real.

I looked up again as Miya dropped the thing she’d been holding.
It looked like an old-fashioned manual lock, but something about it was
different, incomplete. Her eyes were full of tears. 66\tr/fu41—?” I said
softly.

“Naoh,” she murmured. ‘And Navu.”

I bit my lip, not understanding but not able to ask. She
wasn’t looking at me anymore, and she didn’t say anything else.

Finally she moved oil, picking a path through the residue of
grief and prayers. The darkness closed in on us until even my eyes had trouble
making out the way ahead. “Miya?” I whispered, but she didn’t answer. Instead I
felt her hand close over mine, leading me onward in silence.

Abruptly we came up against a surface that was somehow solid
and yielding all at once, like the flesh of some unimaginable creature. She
pulled me forward, forcing me face-first into the membranous wall. I felt it
begin to close in on tile, absorbing me. I tried to resist, starting to panic.
The hard pressure of her hand locked around mine kept me moving, somehow
reassuring me as if her mind was actually feedittg me faith.

We merged, then emerged through the membrane’s other surface
so suddenly that I staggered. She caught my weight against her.

It was pitch-black here, and the air had a pungent dankness
to it. I wondered what I was breathing in; what I’d see, if I could see
anything. Miya’s hand on my chest stopped my forward motion. Her hands guided
me down until we were sitting on a surface my touch couldn’t identify. Still
she didn’t say anything.

“What do we do now?” I whispered thickly, sufprised at the
difficulty I had just forming the words, &s if my brain had gone to sleep.

“Wait,” she murmured. Her voice sounded far away, reluctant,
as if speaking wasn’t something you did here. Her hand stroked my chest gently,
almost tenderly, before it fell away.

I fought the urge to reach out, to reestablish the severed
link between us. I kept my hands clenched at my sides and waited, not letting
myself ask what we were waiting for.

Guidance. Insight. Answers.
The words formed inside
my thoughts as if someone had put them there, but it was only my own mind
guessing. I didn’t believe the random psi energies of the reef were any more
likely than the random motion of the stars to answer the question of what the
hell we were going to do about Tau. But I waited, matching the rhythm of my
breathing to Miya’s, knowing that at least here I had a chance to feel
something, to interface with the world that I’d been cut off from, even if
whatever it gave back to me proved as meaningless as everything else.

I pressed my hands against the unidentifiable surface of the
ground, increased the pressure until they were the focus of the pain and
tension that seemed to have become a paft of me to the point where I wasn’t
sure I could draw a breath anymore that didn’t hurt my chest. At first all I
heard was the sound of my own breathing, all I saw was nothing: random patterns
of phantom light, the reactive firing of neurons behind my eyes. If Miya had prayers
to say or questions to ask, she asked them inside her mind, where I couldn’t
hear them. My own mind was a blank slate.

But inside my head I could feel the pressure of the reef’s
presence building, like the whispering of half-heard voices in an unknown
tongue. As I listened, the potential energy of my tension grounded itself in
the darkness, flowing out of me through my hands into the unseen, the unknown.
As I let it go the phantom voices grew louder, flowed across the boundaries of
my senses, becoming colors, odors, fragments of sensation that made gooseflesh
crawl up my body.

I shifted, restless with sensation, felt my shoulder contact
Miya. I started, as if my body had forgotten I wasn’t here alone.

She pressed closer, unexpectedly, as if she was the one who
needed contact, reassurance, a guide, now. Searching in the darkness I found
her hand, held it. Its coldness startled me. A tremor ran through her arm into
my body. I held or, not knowing what it meant, only glad that she didn’t pull
away.

I felt my concentration begin to dissolve again, coherent
thought turning to bubbles on an undersea swell of indescribable stimuli ...
slowly reassembling into logic and recognizable images, the sense of Miya’s
body pressed against mine ... drifting out again into some alien sea, drawn
back ...

... seeing her with an impossible clarity that vision couldn’t
begin to capture:
seeing beauQ that had nothing to do with surface features;
need that had everything to do with her soul; faith that defied fate and
description ....
All the things that had drawn me to her like gravity—that
had made me trust her, made me willing to risk my life for a stranger. I’d
thrown away everything I’d struggled so hard to become to be in her world
instead of the one I’d always known. Seeing myself through her mind’s eyes:
finding everything that I loved about her reflected in the image my face ......
My stunned thoughts dissolved, rising and escaping, slipping through the
fingers of my brain ....

... And slowly reintegrated, until I could feel her hand in
mine ... her mind ...
Her==
a Hydran among Humans, knowing them as
individuals, not a faceless enemy. And yet always an outsider, an alien ... even
though by reaching out to them she made herself an outsider among her own
people. I wondered why she’d done it, why she’d been drawn to the Human side,
after all that had been done to her people, all the things that made her sister
hatg Humans ....

But I didn’t have to wonder anymore why she’d looked at me
and found her nasheirtah ....

... And dissolving into the everywhere, I knew with my last
coherent thought just how much love it was possible to feel ....

... There in the everywhere her mind was open, shining, like
a sanctuary; once again there was no barrier between us, no need for any kind
of defense. We were one with the matrix of random energy around us ... with
this world, with the universe that everything was a part of. With each other
... her body against mine, our bodies folding, combining, flowing through each
other while the solid floor of the chamber seemed to fall away beneath us. I
felt myself rise out of reality, radiant energy shining from every pore, as we
were absorbed into the luminous heights of rapture. Together we were whole,
together we could find the answer to any question, every need ....

And then the shining heights flooded with an acid fog of
terror and grief, and reality came crashing in to claim us.

Suddenly we were two separate, lost souls again, crouched
blindly in the stifling darkness. Beside me Miya was gasping with shock.

“Miya—7” I called, still stupefied by visions, not knowing
what had been a hallucination, what was real, as a smothering pall of disaster
filled the space around me.

I felt her hand on my arm, urging me up. “No,” I said
hoarsely,
so close, so close
—feeling the answer we’d come for vanish
like a dream at the sound of my voice. “No, Miya, ry4i1—”

But she wouldn’t wait. She forced me up, every movement leaden
after the memory of flight, and guided me back through the membranous wall of
the prayer chamber, through the glimmering shadowland where the dream jetsam of
Hydrans and cloud-whales coexisted.

We reached the spot where the boat lay waiting. Miya looked
at rt, hesitating, and then glanced up at the fog-blind distance, as if she saw
something I couldn’t. And then, still without a word, she looked back at me. I
felt her thoughts close around me ....

We were back on the river’s shore, standing beside Grandmother
again. I held on to Miya as she reeled against me, as if the strain of always
carrying me on her mind’s back had drained the last of her strength. The sun
had already set. I glanced down to check the time on my databand and saw
nothing but a bare scar. I looked away again, feeling drzzy.

Grandmother still held Joby in her arrns. She was standing,
her body straining the way Miya’s had as she gazed into the distance, searching
for something I couldn’t imagine with a sense I couldn’t feel. She didn’t even
react to our arrival; but Miya said, almost inaudibly, “We have to go back.”

Before I could stop her our reality changed again. The river
was gone. We were standing on open ground in front of the smoking remains of a
building ....
The monastery.
Grandmother’s home.

Something—someone—had dropped a plasma burst on it.

“
Aiyeh!
”
Miya fell to her knees, holding her
head. Grandmother stood beyond her, rigid and silent, like a statue. Joby began
to wail. I took him from Grandmother’s arms, rocked him in my own, crooning
toneless, meaningless words, trying to comfort him with motion and sound,
because I couldn’t do anything real for anybody.

He quieted, surprising me. His voice fell away to a soft keening;
he clung to my neck, half choking me with need. Time began again: my other
senses registered the reek of burning, sounds of grief and pain carrying from
the distance. I realized finally that there Were still other people here.
Looking toward the ruins, I saw figures moving, tiny and unrecognrzable from
this distance.

And then, suddenly, someone else was beside us, appearing between
eyeblinks.
Hanjen.

I stumbled back, startled like I always was when somebody
did that, but he didn’t even glance at me. All his attention was on
Grandmother. He bowed, pressing her hands to his forehead ... slowly raised his
head again. His throat worked as if he was trying to speak. But he didn’t
speak, at least not in a way that I could hear. Beside me, Miya slowly got to
her feet. Her face was colorless; her eyes were empty. She turned away, and I
heard her being sick.

As Hanjen released Grandmother’s hands she took his face gently
between them, shaking her head. I realized suddenly what it had been about:
He’d
thought she was dead.
We could have been dead, all of us, if we hadn’t gone
to the reefs when we did. I forced myself to ask him, “Who did this—?” even
though I was sure I didn’t need to. Still, somehow I needed to hear the answer.

“Tau,” Hanjen said bitterly, and I felt it like a blow even
though it was the answer I’d been expecting. He looked toward the smoking
ruins. “They said that the oyasin was harboring HARM members.”

“Was anybody killed?” I whispered, barely able to speak the
words this time.

“Yes,” Hanjen murmured, shaking his head. It wasn’t a
denial, but a clearing motion: I remembered how death had felt, trapped inside
of me, when I’d still had my telepathy; how it had saturated all my senses,
filled even the air around me until I couldn’t breathe. “We don’t know how
many,” he said thickly, &t last. “some people fled. Some of the survivors
said that something happened to them before the explosion: That they couldn’t
use their Gift—their speech became slurred, &s if they’d been drugged. No
one really knows what had happened, or how many escaped. I thought ... the
oyasin ...” He broke off, glancing at her again. She was already moving away,
going on foot toward the burned-out shell of the monastery, where stunned
survivors still drifted like insects around a flame.