Dreamfall (39 page)

Grandmother ....
Grandmother was going to help me. I
studied the map again, searching the street for landmarks.
There.
I
spotted the place Hanjen had said I’d find the survivors from the monastery.
Tree-form pillars marked its entrance, the wall facing the street was a mosaic
in what must once have been brilliant pinks and golds, the colors of sunset
clouds. The building face was mauve with dust and pockmarked with missing tiles
now—but there couldn’t be anything else that matched the description he’d given
me so closely. I started toward it, feeling the tightness in my chest ease.
Almost
safe
—

Two figures materialized in front of me just as I reached
the entrangs—two Hydrans I’d never seen before, both men, bigger and heavier
than most. I stopped short as they blocked my way. They stared at me; the
stares weren’t friendly. I wondered if they were trying to mindspeak me. “Get
away from here, Human,” one said, in Standard so thickly accented I could
barely make out the words. “Go now.”

“I’m not Human,” I said, in Hydran. “I’Ve come to See the
oyasin.” I faced down their stares, letting them have a good look into my eyes.

They frowned back at me, then at each other. “Mixed-blood,”
one of them muttered to the other, and then made a gesture at his head.

“Halfbreed,” the other said, to me. A telekinetic shove made
me stagger back. “Drug addict. Mebtaku. You are not fit to approach the oyasin.
Go back to the Humans where you belong.”

“She wants to see me,” I said, trying to keep my voice under
control.

“I think not.” They moved closer together, still blocking my
wa1l, like they believed the only way I could get past them would be to go
through them. I wondered what would happen if I actually tried it—realtzed I’d
never even get that close, when they could make me back off without ever
touching me.

DKEAMF’ALL / 259

“Namaste. I have been waiting for you.” Suddenly Grandmother
was standing in the street beside me.

“Jeezv!” I gasped, and stumbled back again. The two Hydrans
did the same thing. For once I didn’t feel embarrassed.

“Oyasin—” one of the Hydrans guarding the entrance protested.
“You would come out to this deathbringer?”

I froze, thinking that somehow even this stranger knew about
my past. But then I realized that it was just another way of calling me
Human.

She turned to them, giving them a long look, but probably
not a silent one. They bowed to her, finally, and then they bowed to me,
reluctantly. They moved aside to let us pass.

I followed her in under the shadowed building entrance,
through a small atrium where a handful of children were tossing a silver metal
ball back and forth without ever touching it. Each time the ball hit a wall,
chiming silvery music showered down on us, and the children laughed.

Beyond them was a large, high-ceilinged room. More people
were gathered there: adults moving aimlessly or sleeping on mats; children
curled up in someone’s lap or darting like birds through the forest of adult
bodies. The ak smelled of cooking. Someone was playing a musical instrument I
couldn’t put a name to; there was’ so little audible conversation that the
haunting music carried all through the room.

Here and there stray children drifted up toward the ceiling
as if they were weightless. Sometimes an adult or another child went up after
them or else silently ordered them back down. I thought about Joby, who couldn’t
watch them drifting overhead like fragments of a dream, couldn’t even take a
step without Miya’s help. I tried not to see his eyes in every small face that
turned to look at me.

There were a lot of people here. I wondered whether all of
them had been at the monastery or whether this was always used as a shelter. It
had obviously been something else, once—the organically patterned beauty of the
walls and ceiling was as detailed as it had been in the building where I’d met
the Community Council. I wondered if this was part of the same complex. ft wasn’t
as well kept up, if it was. I could see the signs of age and neglect everywhere—too
much dust, too much indifference. “What was this place?”

Grandmother glanced at me. ‘A—performance hall, you would
say. The Community would gather here to share special dreams and creations the
Way had revealed to them.”

“You mean something like art or music?” I listened to the music
echoing behind us, imagining how much more interactive a concert, or any other
kind of art, could be if the audience could have access to the artist’s mind
and feel that creativity taking form. “They don’t do that anymore?”

She shook her head; her veil fluttered like a moth’s wing. “There
are not enough people anymore. It became too ... cold.” She didn’t mean simply
the temperature. “If they want to share, they find a smaller space.”

She led me on into another room, &r empty cubicle with
only a mat on the floor and an oil lamp burning. Its tendril of smoke rose
undisturbed. I wondered if this was where she went to medttate, or sleep ...
or, I hoped, search for MIYZ, or someone who knew where Miya was. She kneeled
down on the mat, slowly and carefully. I kneeled down across from her, sensing
that it was what she expected, trying to be patient and let things happen,
trying not to talk too much, push too much, be too Human. I focused on the music
I could still hear above the clatter and munnur of the hall outside.

Grandmother looked up from the flame to my face, down at my
clothing. ‘Ah, Bian,” she said with a kind of soffow, like something had become
obvious to her that I’d completely missed. She didn’t say what it was.

“You don’t know where Naoh took Miya?” I asked, finally,
when she didn’t say anything else.

“I know where they are,” she said, as calmly as if she was
telling me the time.

.’Wherg—?” I started to get up.

“Bian,” she said, stopping me with a single word, as
abruptly as if she’d paralyzed me with psi.

I sank back onto my knees. “‘What?”

“You must not go to her. Bad things will happen there soon.
They will happen to you, if you go there.”

I froze. “‘What do you mean? You had a sending? You saw it?
What kind of bad things—”

She waited until my questions died awa], and then she said, “Naoh
and her people are spreading fear ....”

“I know—” I said and bit my lip.

“They show the Community that the Humans would rather let a
child die—a Human child—than let the FTA come here to see how we live. They say
the Humans have decided to destroy us all and desecrate our last sacred
place—that your research team is proof of it.”

“But that’s not true—” I broke off again, remembering that
half of it was true, already; I’d told the Satoh that myself. And the rest of
it might become the truth sooner than I wanted to admit. “Won’t people know—?”

“The Satoh believe it is true, and that is what people will
see. Naoh asks the Community to gather where the Bridge of Sighs crosses over
to Riverton. She tells them that if enough believe as they do, they can stop
Tau. That enough of our people joined together can banish all trace of the
Human occupation from our ry911d—”

“Oh, God,” I muttered, rubbing my face. Miya knew about the
airborne drug. But Naoh wasn’t sharing the truth about that with the Community.
“When is this—miracle—supposed to happen?”

“Soon. Those who have heard are already beginning to gather
and draw others.”

I thought about the people I’d seen out in the street as I’d
made my way here, their restlessness, the suspicion in their faces. I wondered
whether the Satoh’s rumors had been the cause of it all. And then I thought
about what Naoh was telling them to do. Uniting, acting with one mind, almost
sounded reasonable. As if it was something that should have been done years ago
.... Maybe it had been done years ago; maybe it had been tried again and again
through the years since Humans had taken over Refuge. But it had always failed,
because Human technology had been one step ahead of them all the time, and
Human ruthlessness hadn’t changed at all.

Tau’s CorpSec had nephase gas. B.orosage had used it in my
hotel room; used it again at the monastery. There was absolutely no doubt in my
mind that he’d use it on a mob trying to force its way into Riverton. And
gathered together in one place, without their Gift, they’d be sitting targets
for anything Tau wanted to do to them.

I looked up at Grandmother again. “You see the Humans attacking
the demonstration, don’t you? And we’re helpless to stop ll—”

She nodded, her face heavy with shadows. ‘That is what I
have seen, if the people follow Naoh’s Way. And they will. No one can stop it.”

“Hanjen is trying. Have you tried—?”

She nodded. “But it is too late.”

“How much did you know about the Satoh’s activities, anyway?
And for how long? Did you know they planned to kidnap Joby?”

“Yes, Bian, I knew ...” she said quietly, shaking her head.
I shut my eyes. ‘At the time, the Way that I saw brought us to a better place,
in the end.”

“But now it’s changed?”

She didn’t answer me.

“Why? What changed?”
Me?
Was it my interference, when
Miya ... ? But the Corpses nearly had her. If she hadn’t run into me, she’d
probably be dead now, and Naoh’s vision with her.
The riot gas?
If
Grandmother hadn’t known about that, would that throw off her precognition? I
didn’t know enough about it even to guess, and she wasn’t telling me. “Maybe I
can still stop them. Maybe I can change things [ask—”

“No.” She shook her head again and rose slowly to her feet. “Bad
things will happen no matter what you do, Bian. If you go after Miya, they will
happen to you too.”

“Where’s Joby?”

“He is safe.”

o’Where? Here? Do you have him?”

“He is safe,” she said again, and the look in her eyes told
me that was all the answer I was getting. She started toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She turned back, her veiled gaze unreadable. “I am going to
join the gathering at the Bridge of Sighs.”

“Why?”Iasked.

“Because that is where the Way leads me.”

She disappeared.

I lunged after her, grabbing at her cloak. My fingers closed
over nothing. I scrambled to my feet, swearing under my breath; knowing, as I
left the room, that I was heading for the bridge too. Even if I had to get
there on foot, .if Miya was there then it was where the Way led me now.

As I went back out through the great hall I realized the
music had stopped. Instead, someone was shouting in Hydran, the words echoing
above the level of random noise, like the speaker was trying to make everybody
else listen. Maybe in this crowd of unfocused energy, shouting was actually
easier than telepathyl or maybe he was using his mind to spread some other
message. The voice was both louder and less distinct than the music had been;
it took me a minute to get a fix on the words.

The speaker was standing in the middle of the room. I
realized that he was someone I actually kneW someone from the Satoh. Tiene, one
of the radicals I’d met that first night with Miya and Naoh. By the time I recognized
him I didn’t have to listen to know what he was saying or why he was here.

I shoved my way through the mass of bodies around him until
we were standing face-to-face. He looked down at me. I looked down and realized
he was drifting about half a meter off the ground, making himself visible above
the crowd. When I looked up again, his face was slack with surprised
recognition.

I hit him in the stomach.

He dropped to the floor like a sack of laundry. “Haven’t you
done enough to these people?” I shouted. “Get the hell out of here, Tiene, and
don’t come back.”

He glared up at me, and his expression told me what I couldn’t
hear him think. “Naoh was right about you,” he mumbled, doubled over, holding
his stomach.

“No, she wasn’t,” I said, backing off as he got to his feet,
in case he wasn’t as dazed as he looked. ‘And she’s wrong about this. Take me
to her, J’ll—”

He disappeared. The breeze of his disappearance ruffled my
hair.

“Shit.” I went on across the room. People backed out of my
wa!, leaving me a straight path to the exit.

When I got outside I searched the air above the rooftops for
the profile of the bridge; found it, relieved. I wasn’t in the mood to ask for
directions, and I didn’t think anyone in the street was in the mood to give
them to me.

I pushed myself, not sure how long it would take me to reach
the bridge the hard way, through this maze of streets ... not sure how long I
had before things turned critical. I wondered how many Hydrans had listened to
the Satoh; how many of them were going to be hurt or killed today because of
it. Whether one of them was going to be Miya. Or me.

But I couldn’t let myself think about that. I had to keep
believing that even Grandmother couldn’t see the Way completely clearly; that
somehow it could still be changed. That I could change it ....

I heard the crowd long before I saw it. By the time I
reached the open plaza at this end of the Riverton bridge, the square was
already filled to overflowing. I realized then that the noise they made was
nothing compared to the sound of a Human crowd that size ... maybe because I
could only hear half of it. I was stunned by how many people had actually
responded to Naoh’s twisted vision ... how much that said about their anger,
their sense of futility and powerlessness.

An amplified Human voice speaking in Standard rang out over
the crowd noise—ordering them to disperse, threatening reprisals. I couldn’t
see the speaker, but even distorted by amplification I knew it was Borosage.

I shoved my way through the crowd backed up into the street’s
entrance, trying to pee over their heads, listening for the sound of a familiar
voice, the sight of a familiar face.