Dreamfall (36 page)

“Is there an airborne form of the drug Corporate Security uses?”
Hanjen asked me.

I hesitated, remembering what had happened to me, and to
Miya, when Tau had closed its fist on us back in my hotel room. “I don’t know.”
ReaLrzing as I said it that I didn’t know enough about nephase to know whether
an airborne form of it was even possible. I was surprised that he didn’t
either.

“There is an airborne form of the drug,” Miya murmured behind
me. “It’s used for crowd control, when too many Hydrans try to gather for a
rally. Draco manufactures it.”

“Oh, God,” I muttered, seeing Sand in my mind’s eYe, seeing
him abandoning Tau to twist in the wind .... Had he left Borosage something
more—enough rope for Tau to hang itself with? I shifted Joby in my arrns. He
rested quietly with his head on my shoulder, almost as if I really could touch
him, reassure him, someho% with my mind.
Had Borosage known where we were
when they destroyed this place 7 Was the timing of the attack really just
chance? Had they known Grandmother had taken us away ... or had Tau wanted us
all dead?

Hanjen looked at me again, suddenly, as if he was only now
seeing me clearly. “That’s a Human child,” he said. He looked past me, and I
saw him realize who the third person with us was. “Miya—?” He caught her by the
ann. She didn’t resist, still pale and shaken. He looked back at Joby, at me,
away at the oyasin moving among the victims in the distance. I watched his
disbelief fade into resignation. He let Miya go, his mouth like a knife cut. I
wondered what he wouldn’t say, wouldn’t even allow himself to think as he
watched Grandmother.

Miya came unsteadily to my side. Her hand reached up absently
to stroke Joby’s hair. I wondered whether she felt the tremor run through me as
I realized what Hanjen must be thinking—who he must be blaming for what had
happened here.

“The child must be returned,” Hanjen said. His voice
strained, as if he’d read my mind, but he hadn’t needed to.

“I know,” Miya whispered, her own voice a thread of sound. “But
then I’ll never see him again. What will become of him—?”

“You should have thought about that before you took him.”
Hanjen moved away from us, walking deliberately, but still moving too quickly.
He headed toward the ruined monastery and the survivors.

“rt wasn’t supposed to be like fi1is—” Miya munnured in Hydran.
The frayed thread of her voice snapped under the weight of the obvious.

“Yes it was,” someone said behind me.
Naoh.

I turned and she was there, in the flesh. Her eyes were
black pools of pain as she stared at the monastery, the huddled figures.

“When our people learn how far the Humans have gone—destroying
a holy place, causing the deaths of innocent children, trying to kill an
oyasin—” Her voice shook; I felt rage blow through my soul like a burning wind.
Miya stiffened beside me, her own face a mask of devastation, as if her sister’s
fury had immolated all coherent thought.

I felt a totally different emotion as I looked at Naoh. “Did
you know this was going to happen—J”

Naoh swung around, glaring at me. “Who are You, to say that
to me?” But she didn’t deny it.

“Naoh—?” Miya said, when her sister didn’t say anything
more. It was half a demand, half a plea.

“I followed the Way,” Naoh whispered. “The oyasin says
sometimes the Way is hard ....” She looked back at me. “My sister understands
that.”

Miya sucked in a sharp breath. “What are you talking about?”
she demanded, her voice rising. “That you betrayed these people to Borosage?
Are you—are )os—”
(Insane!)
Her mind screamed the word she wouldn’t
speak. But as their eyes locked, I watched Miya’s expression soften, like
candle wax melting in a flame.

“Miya?” I murmured, and touched her arm. She didn’t look at me,
didn’t even acknowledge me. I backed away from her, shaken. I left them
standing there, like one woman staring into a mirror, and started toward the
place where Grandmother was still moving slowly among the survivors. Even from
a distance I read pain in her every motion: the shared suffering that only I
was immune to, out of everyone here. The urge to ask her whether she’d known
what was going to happen here died stillborn inside me.

“Bian!” Naoh called out suddenly. “Our people had to learn!
We had to let them see what will happen to them! Are you a true revolutionary?
Are you truly Hydran—”

I swung around. “Hydrans don’t kill people! And they don’t
use Humans to do their dirty work for them, eithsv—” I said, my voice raw.

“You don’t understand—’) She broke off as Hanjen reappeared
suddenly beside her.

“Naoh!” he shouted, the single word filled with a kind of emotion
I’d never heard before in a Hydran voice.

She reeled as if he’d struck het got control and stopped him
in his tracks from coming after her again. His hands trembled in front of him
with an urge I understood perfectly. “Send the boy back! This is sickness!
Bes’
mod!
”
He turned to Miya, reaching for Joby. “Give me the boy!”

“You can’t stop us!” Naoh shouted furiously. “Our people
will know the truth, and they will rise up—”

“And do what?” I yelled.

“Change the world! Bring the new age, when we will have everything,
and the Humans will be nothing. If enough of us cry out, the Allsoul will
answer us. If you are not with us, you’re against us! You will disappear too.”

“l’m nOt HUman—”

“No,” she said, her voice roughening. ‘And not Hydran. you
are a mebtaku. There is no place anywhere for something like you. Miya!” She
jerked her head.

Miya looked at me, grief-stricken. I knew as she looked into
my eyes that I was losing her.

“Miya ... ?” I reached out. “Naoh, damn it, you don’t understand!
Miya, talk to her,
tell
her about the nephase—”

My fingers closed over Miya’s shadow as they disappeared. My
empty hands knotted, and I swore under my breath.

Hanjen stood watching me. He shook his head. (Every time I
see you, things are worse.) He looked down, rubbing his face, smearing it with
ash.

“Are you blaming me for this—?”

“No.” He looked at me blankly, as if he couldn’t imagine
where I’d gotten that idea. Then, still looking at me, I saw him remember. “You
heard that—?”

“I learned your language,” I said in Hydran.

He shook his head again. “But I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I only thought it.”

I bit my lip.

“You heard my thought.” He was looking at me now with
something new in his eyes.

I glanced away. “Sometimes it happenS .... I can’t control
it.”

He half frowned, as if he was concentrating on something I
couldn’t see. “You ate more ...
present,
to me.” He looked up again,
searching my face. “Even with all this—” He gestured, his own face furrowing,
and I knew what he meant: the stench of grief and death and pain that went
beyond the physical, that was taking every ounce of his Gift and will, every
fragment of concentration, to endure. “You ate
here.
”
He touched
his head. “Is it Miya—?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know ... or maybe the reefs. We went to
a ... sacred place.”

“She took you there?” It sounded like disbelief. “No Human—”

“I’m not Human!” I held up my fist, my wrist, showed him the
naked flesh, nothing but the scar that the databand had always hidden. “The
oyasin took us there.”

He shook his head, as if this time her motives were as
inscrutable as mine. “What arc you doing here?” he asked finally.

I told him as we started back toward the ruins where Grandmother
was still trying to help the people she’d given refuge to. Now she was as
homeless as the rest of them. As we got closer I spotted other members of the
Council moving among the injured, and strangers who must have been the local
equivalent of medics.

Grandmother looked up as we reached her side. As our eyes
met, a shock wave of grief, a sense of
age,
overwhelmed me. The contact
was gone before I could even react. Suddenly I wanted to give her all the
strength I had left in my mind, in my body. But my mind couldn’t reach her. I
didn’t offer her my hand, just stood useless and silent while Hanjen spoke with
her, his voice barely audible against the background noise. I wondered why he
was speaking out loud, if he was actually doing it for my sake or if it was
just easier, when the cacophony of suffering must be so much louder inside
their heads. “... We’ve found a place where all of you can stay safely, for
now. I’ll find a better place. We’ll rebuild .... Is there any other help that
I can give you—?”

Grandmother shook her head. “We need nothing else that you
can give us.” She glanced away, at the shadow-figures moving brokenly past us. “What
has been taken away today, only time can give back.” She looked at me then,
suddenly. “Only time, Bian,” she murmured, and touched my face. “You understand
... ollly time.”

I swallowed, suddenly choking on grief, and nodded.

“What is he doing here—?” Someone jerked me around where I
stood: one of the Council members.

“He is with me,” Hanjen said quickly.

“He is with me,” Grandmother said. “He is with us now.”

A refugee. A Refugee.
I looked past Grandmother at
the stunned, uncomprehending faces all around her.
Don’t let them turn you
into one,
Wauno had said.
Them. Tau ...
.
HARM. Miya==
The
Council member frowned. He let go of me as if I was hot. Whatever he said or
thought then, I couldn’t feel it, but I saw the look in his eyes. His hand
spasmed. He turned away, gesturing for Hanjen to follow. Other Council members
joined them. I watched them arguing silently, glancing my way but not at me—at
the ruins. I didn’t have to hear them to guess the focus of the argument.

I looked back at Grandmother. The wind that billowed her
cloak and tore at her veil was cold and full of ashes. “She’s gone .... What
should I do?” I asked finally. “I don’t know what to do.”

Grandmother blinked. “Follow the Way ....” She cocked her
head when I didn’t say anything. “Did you feel nothing?”

I shook my head.
We didn’t have enough time
—I stopped
the thought before it could form into words. “I saw Miya.”
Saw into her
shared her mind, understood ... joined.
I knew the effect that our joining
had had on her, how she’d seen me, what she’d found inside my heart and mind.
It had been enough to make her love me, but it hadn’t been enough to keep her
from leaving me behind.

“Then perhaps she is the answer for you,” Grandmother said,
waiting just long enough to be sure I thought of it first. “The Way will lead
you to her. Or perhaps both of you will only find the Way together.”

“But she’s gone.”

“She is with Naoh.”

“I knOW—”

“Naoh is bes’ mod.”

“Bes’ mod?” I said. The words seemed to mean “nerve storm.”

Grandmother nodded like I had some idea what I was talking
about, or she did. ‘And she is very powerful.” Her hand touched her head. “She
draws other lost ones to her. She feeds on their power. Miya has been taken by
the storm.”

“But—”

She held up her hand, as if she was listening to something I
couldn’t hear. “You ate silence—the silence at the storm’s eye. Bian, she needs
your silence.”

I shook my head, not sure if I understood anything she was
telling me. “But how can I find her?”

She bent her head. “Follow the Way.”

“But—”

“Oyasin.” Hanjen was back beside us. He bowed to her, then touched
my arm—something Hydrans seemed to do habitually, at least to me. I wondered
whether it was the only way they could think of to get my attention. He nodded
like he was asking me to follow him.

I glanced at Grandmother. She watched me, her face unreadable,
as usual. I bowed to her; she bowed to me. I followed Hanjen.

“What did she mean about Naoh?” I asked. “She said something
about a ‘rterve storm.’ I don’t understand what that means.”

“A sort of sickness ... “ he murmured. “It destroys one’s ...
perspective, one’s self—” His hand gestured at the empty air, as if he couldn’t
find the words he needed to make it plain to me.

“You mean she’s qazy,” I said in Standard.

He shrugged. “We could not Say that,” he murmured, and I
wasn’t sure whether it was a criticism or just a comment. “There was a time, in
our society, when such a person was protected. If their thoughts became too ...
unstable, the Community would gather and join with them until they were healed.”

“Who decided when someone was—sick enough to need that?” I
asked.

He looked at me as if I’d asked something incomprehensible. “Everyone
knew,” he said. “We were a Community. We were ...” He sighed, looking away. “Too
often now a sick mind goes unhealed ... unnoticed.” His voice hardened. “They
draw in others who are susceptible, who caffy the seeds of the sanie ...
soul-rot. They feed on one another’s distorted thoughts. I have seen whole
groups starved to death together—locked into a joining that shut out the entire
world, even their need to eat or sleep, until they were unable to save
themselves.”

“And no one—noticed?” I said, disbelief rising like bile in
my throat. “How is that possibLe?” Humans seemed to ignore another person’s
need as easily as breathing, because they never had to feel it unless they
wanted to. But Hydrans—

He shrugged. “We call ourselves the Community. But we have
not been one since the Humans came. We are like the cloud-reefs ... mined out.
This, fus1s”—he gestured in the direction of Freaktown—“is the rubbish heap of
histor], all that is left of what we wete.” He turned, his gaze scanning the
distance in another direction. “When the FTA has gone, when your research group
has finished its work, they will take this final reef.”