Dreamfall (59 page)

“These suits are malfunctioning,” the Fed protested, as the
oxygen processors began to clear out his lungs and his brain functions
nofinalized. He was staring at the garbage readouts inside his helmet.

“It’s all right,” I said, trying to give my words the kind
of assurance he needed to hear. “l’ll lead you out. You only have to follow me.”

“Your suit is on-line?” he demanded.

“Yeah,” I said, not looking at him. “It’S on-line. Let’s go.”
I held out my hand again, and the Fed took it. He put out his hand in turn,
taking hold of the bondie. The guard took the laborer’s other hand. They pulled
him forward, carefully, as I led them to the wall of rubble. He came with us,
as witless as a drone, but at least he came.

I waded into the reef-face again, leading them after me one
by one. Relief filled me as I found the mind-lit wormhole of my passage still
waiting to guide us back through the matrix. It was hard enough to keep track
of the others as they floundered after me, slowed by their injuries, by shock,
by inexperience. I almost lost someone more than once as we blundered through
nightmarish pockets of random density in what was for them mostly pitch-black
effluvia. I had to remind myself that they couldn’t sense what I sensed, each
time I had to double back to keep one or another of them moving in the right
direction.

I couldn’t communicate with them now to guide or reassure them;
the suits’ commlinks turned everything into unintelligible static. I was glad I
didn’t have to listen to what they were saying. I knew what they were feeling,
and it was all I could do to keep myself moving through their nightmare toward
the light. The journey in had been clear and easy; the journey out was by way
of another universe, with a side trip through hell. My breath was coming in
ragged gasps; I wasn’t sure if it was my strength giving out or the suit. I
only knew that if I didn’t reach the other end of this mental rope soon, none
of us was going to reach it.

And then, suddenly, we were through—I staggered out of the
reef-face, dragging the Fed with me. The others came through behind him and
dropped to the floor like stones. I fell on my knees, coughing convulsively,
zts workers and guards swarmed over us, stripping off our helmets and suits,
leaving me defenseless against the mass of incoherent noise around us, the
feedback inside my head—I covered my head with my arms, trying to shut it out.

someone pulled me to my feet, pulled my hands away, asking, ‘Are
you all right?”

I nodded blindly. He led me out of the crush of
oversolicitous bodies. I opened my eyes again finally, to Natasa’s face.
Realizing, as I did, why I hadn’t wanted to see it.

“You didn’t find her,” he whispered. It wasn’t an accusation—wasn’t
even a question. His resignation pooled on the surface of a grief deeper than
time. “She’s gone.”

I nodded, swallowing hard as I choked down his emotions. “The
three I brought out ... they were it.” I bent my head in the direction of the
survivors. “They were all.”

“At least—” His voice broke. ‘At least she didn’t suffer.”
He wiped his face with the palm of his hand, thinking,
(It was the living,
the ones left behind, who suffered.
Joby.
His wtfe was gone, Miya was
Sone.==. Sood God, what was he going to do about Joby now?).

I didn’t know, and I didn’t know what to say.

The others were catching up to us now. Natasa wiped at his
eyes.

I turned to see the Fed I’d just rescued supported by a
couple of med techs. I saw him glance away long enough to notice Natasa’s
red-rimmed eyes before he looked back at me. “I wanted to thank you—” he said,
his voice hoarse with pain.

I nodded, only registering him with part of my attention, the
rest still mired in Natasa’s grief. I felt my mind beginning to close up,
inexorably, like a fist.

“And I want to talk to You. Now.”

“Sir,” one of the techs holding him up said, “now we take
you to the infirmary and make sure none of your injuries ate life-threatening.”

The Fed looked at her, exasperated, but he didn’t argue. He
glanced at Natasa. “This bondie better not have any unfortunate accidents
before I’m up and around. You understand me?”

Natasa’s dark eyes held his stare. “Perfectly,” he said.

The Fed let the med techs lead him away; he looked back once==
like he wanted to be certain that he remembered my face or that I hadn’t aheadY
disaPPeared.

I stood beside Natasa, watching them go, through a silence
that was as painful as it was long. Finally Natasa straightened his shoulders,
as if he was trying to shrug off the weight of his grief. I couldn’t feel his
mind anymore; couldn’t see in through his eyes. Nothing showed on his face now.
I watched him take something off his equipment belt. He reached out and clamped
it around my wrist.

I stiffened, starting to pull away, until I realized that it
wasn’t binders. There was a flash of light; a shock ran up my arm. When he took
the thing away, I wasn’t wearing a bond tag anymore. Instead there was only my
own raw, flayed flesh in a band two fingers wide circling my wrist. “Your
contract is canceled,” Natasa said.

I looked at him, not sure whether the pain or the surprise I
felt was more intense. Neither one of those came up to the knees of my
disbelief. “You can do thal—’!” I whispered.

He shrugged, grimacing. “It wasn’t a valid contract. You
should never have been here in the first place.”

I took a deep breath, let it out. “What happens now?”

His hand settled on his gun; his stare hit zero degrees
Kelvin as he searched the crowd for Protz. “Now,” he said, “the shit hits the
fan.” He subvocalized a call, and suddenly two guards were pushing through the
confusion of bodies. Natasa gestured at me. “Take him to the infirmaty. Stay
with him.”

“BUt I’m ngf—”

He gave me a look. “Get his arm cared for. Then find out
where they put that injured Fed and put him in the next bed.”

The guards nodded. one of them smiled. “No problem.”

“How’s Park?” Natasa asked. That had been the name on the
datapatch of the guard I’d brought out.

“Meds say she’ll be all right, sir.”

“Good,” Natasa murmured, nodding, but looking down.

“Namaste,” I murmured. Natasa glanced at me, without understanding.
As the guards led me away I looked back, watching Natasa’s progress toward
Protz. They were out of my line of sighi before I could see it happen, but I
smiled anyway.

Bv rhe time I was sharing a room with the Fed, he’d been sedated
past caring. Any conversation with him was going to have to wait. At least I’d
overheard enough to know that his name was Ronin, and that he was going to
survive.

It was almost harder to believe I might actually survive
this. I lay down on the empty bed, still cradling my sudoskin-covered wrist,
glad enough to rest as fatigue unraveled what was left of my consciousness.

I opened my eyes again, startled out of sleep, only reayzrng
then that I’d been asleep, probably for hours.

Luc Wauno was standing beside the bed, his hand still on my
shoulder, shaking me awake. He held his hand up in silent warning as he saw my
eyes open.

“wauno?” I mumbled, sitting up. “where the hell did you come
from?”

He nodded at the other bed. Natasa stood beside it, helping
Ronin to his feet. Ronin looked more stupefied than I did, probubly from the
meds he’d been given, but he was tracking and functional. Natasa looked worse
than Ronin, trs if he’d been fighting his grief for hours and losing the
battle. “I don’t like what I’m hearing upstairs,” Natasa said. “I want you both
safely out of reach until there’s backup available.” He handed Ronin his uniform
jacket and pants and began to help him get into them.

As I got out of bed I glanced up at the security monitors.
They were always or, everywhere, including here.

“We’re running a playback loop—all anyone sees is the two of
you sleeping,” Natasa said, answering my look.

“Wher. ut. we going?” I asked, shaking cloud-dreams out of
my head. “No Place is safe—”

“I know a place that is,” Wauno said, and his smile said,
Freaktown.

I nodded, glancing at Ronin, dt the databand on his wrist. “Leave
that here.”

He looked at me like I’d told him to leave one of his eyes.

“They can track you by it. If Tau decides to bury its
mistakes, you won’t be safe anywhere with that on.”

A stunned-prey look filled his face. I saw doubt replace it,
and finalty acceptance. Slowly, reluctantly, he unlatched his data-band; stood
holding ir in his hand like he was weighing it.

“He’S right. It’s the only way to be Sure,” Natasa said.

Ronin dropped the databand on his bed, grimacing. Natasa put
an ann around him, supporting him as we went out of the room. Guards waited in
the hallway to escort us through the installation’s maze to the entrance.

Wauno’s new transport was waiting right where the old one
had, once before, or the landing plaza outside the complex’s main entrance.
There were clouds phasing across the face of the moon as I glanced up ... or
maybe they were something more, watching over us.

More guards were waiting by the transport. They gave us a
thumbs-up and stepped aside. The hatch opened, and Wauno took over supporting
Ronin to help him up the ramp.

I started after them; hesitated as I reaLrzed Natasa wasn’t
following. “What about you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll be all right.” He nodded at the
guards flanking him.

“What if you’re wrong?” I asked.

“Ronin has my testimony and data waiting for him. Wauno
knows how to access it.” He smiled sourly.

“What about Joby?”

His smile disappeared. “He’ll be safe ...” he said, and the
words seemed to choke him. “He’ll be with you.” He went back through the line
of guards toward the complex entrance.

I watched him 80, speechless, until Wauno called my name,
telling me to get on board.

I climbed the ramp, stood beside him while the hatch sealed
behind me. Standing this close to him in the transport’s dimly lit interior, I
saw that he was wearing the medicine pouch ..,Luc, I ... r’m sorry,” I
muttered, looking away. “I never ...”

He looked blank, until he realized what I was looking at. He
touched the worn leather bag and shook his head. “It was there for you,” he
said quietly. “when you needed it. That’s all.”

I looked up at him in disbelief. “How did you know I would
need it?”

“I didn’t,” he said with a slow smile. “It knew, I suppose.
That’s what it does. Believe it or not.” He shrugged, looking up at me again. “I
know what happened when we crashed,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.” He took
his place in the pilot’s seat.

I swallowed a lot of useless words and turned away to find a
seat for myself. Ronin was already strapped in. Sitting behind him was
Perrymeade, holding Joby in his lap.

I stopped moving. “What do you want? You two-faced son gf 4—”

“Cat!” Suddenly Kissindre stood up from the seat behind theirs.
“Shut up and listen to me.” I was already gaping, speechless, as she came
forward, moving carefully as the transport began to lift. I could see the pale
line of a fading scar on her cheek. But she was moving all right, not maimed,
not crippled. I sank into the seat across from Ronin like my brain had shorted
out.

“I know the transport accident wasn’t your fault,” she said
as I looked away from her eyes. “[-Incle Janos knew that too.”

I raised my head. “Then ... why—||” I held up my bandaged
wrist, looking at him. “Why did he do this to me?” My hands made a fist, and
started to tremble.

Her fingers barely touched the sudoskin on my wrist. “To buy
you time, until the FTA could send more investigators. Tio keep Borosage from
killing you.”

I opened my mouth.

“.Do you think you’d be alive now if my uncle had left you
with Tau’s Corporate Security?”

“No,” I whispered. Finally I looked at Perrymeade again. “I
really thought you hated my guts,” I said. “I really thought you meant it.”

“Maybe I did, just then,” Perrymeade said. I almost imagined
I saw a ghost of a smile. “But if I hadn’t, Borosage would never have believed
me.”

“Maybe I deserved it,” I murrnured, glancing away.

“Maybe you were right in everything you did, too.”

I didn’t answer; couldn’t even look back at him. The
unreality of where I was now, the total unexpectedness of what these people had
done, for me and against the system of lies, was almost more than I could deal
with.

When I looked up again at last, it was to look at Joby,
sitting motionless in Perrymeade’s arms. His eyes were on my face, staring at
me as fixedly as the eyes of a doll, until I was sure it wasn’t random. “Joby ...
?” I said softly. He blinked. But he didn’t move, didn’t speak. I looked away
again, sick at heart, wondering if this wasn’t worse somehow than the way he’d
been before. “Why is he here? It could be dangersss—”

“Not as dangerous as leaving him where Tau could find him,”
perrymeade said grimly. I remembered then what Natasa had said to me. I glanced
at Joby again long enough to see that he wasn’t wearing a databand either.

I rubbed my wrist, feeling the sudoskin loosen at the edges
as my ragged nails caught on it. I forced my hand away, wondering if the day
would ever come when I felt secure enough in who I was and where I was to stop
doing that. However long it took, it was going to take even longer now. ‘All
right, then,” I said. “why are you two here?” I nodded at Kissindre and
Perrymeade.

“Adding links to the chain of truth, I hope,” Perrymeade answered.
“I’ve been cooperating with the FTA ever since I learned you’d contacted them.”

“How did you know that?” I asked== surprised.

“Hanjen. Even before Borosage let it slip, Hanjen had contacted
me.”