Dreamfall (62 page)

(Don’t say that!) I thought. (Don’t ever say that, not
ever—)

I felt her surprise ... felt her falter as she remembered
once saying the same words to me. “ft’s all right,” she whispered fiercely, “it
is!” She kissed me again, stroking my hair. But she’d said it out loud. I felt
her withdraw, only a little, keeping the mindlink open but taking one step
back, like somebody who’d stood too close to the fire.

I didn’t try to lie to her; I didn’t dare. We’d both come
too close to the truth that night in the monastery, feeling our minds approach
meltdown in the fusion of our pasts. Maybe enough peace and enough faith would
heal uS, along with Joby. But there’d never been enough of either one in my
life. My past had stolen too many things from me, too often, for too long. Too
much of my life had been spent in a free-fire zone; I didn’t know whether all
of spacetime held enough faith to change who I was into who I might have been
....

And I wondered how I’d ever learn to live with someone else
if I couldn’t live with myself.

Miya set the hammock into gentle motion, ?s if by rocking
us, soothing us to sleep, she could stop time itself, with all its unpredictable
power. I lay motionless in her arrns, letting exhaustion erase the questions
that only time could answer.

Ir rook ten days for the fallout to stop falling. Ten days
when we all stayed in hiding, ten days for us to fill Ronin’s head with enough
understanding of the Hydrans’ situation to convince him that Tau had as much to
answer for to the Community as it did to the bondies ... more. Time enough for
him to stop jumping whenever Miya or Hanjen used their psi. Time enough for him
to stop staring every time Miya and I touched each other, every time we came
out of the same room in the morning, every time he saw us with Joby, together,
a family. Time enough, hour after hour, night and day, for all of us to feel
his fear of the strange fade, as living with freaks and aliens slowly stopped
seeming either freakish or alien to him.

(We’re all following the same Way now,) Miya thought to me,
as we watched Ronin sit down to play a counting game with Joby. (He has no
choice but to come with us.) And watching him, feeling what lay in his mind, I
could almost believe that.

On the tenth day Wauno came back; but this time there was a
gunship hovering over his transport, and Corpses behind him as he came down the
steps. We all looked up together, gaping, through the frozen moment until Wauno
smiled/Miya smiled/Ronin smiled and said, “FTA.” And finally I got past the shock
of seeing uniforms and recognized the logo they wore.

It meant we were safe, that the end was finally in sight.
They’d come this time to take Ronin back across the river for the beginning of
negotiations. Tau heads were still rolling, Wauno told us; Sand, the Draco
Corporate Security Chief, was back on Refuge in person, along with half a dozen
Draco Board Members. An entirely new Tau Board was being set in place like game
pieces by Draco, and negotiators were frantic to get things settled before
their symbiotic economic systems were strangled by the FTA’s shipping embargo.

Ronin took Hanjen with him. Miya and I stayed behind with Joby,
waiting. We didn’t see either of them again, but Hanjen kept Miya informed
mind-to-mind about every painful millimeter of progress that was made. And all
the while Naoh haunted my thoughts like a bad dream. I wondered whether she was
haunting his too.

I knew that Naoh was on Miya’s mind, just like I was sure
Miya was sharing with her everything we learned. But whatever Miya felt about
her sister or her sister’s threats, she wouldn’t share it with me. There was a
reason why a psion’s DNA gave more protection against the Gift along with the
ability to use it .... The idea that life had ever been simpler for Hydrans
than it was for Humans was just one more dream of mine that hadn’t survived the
light of day.

It was a full month before the last square peg of compromise
had been driven into a round hole of necessity: a general amnesty for members
of the Satoh, freeing us to come out of hiding without being afraid that Tau’s
Corpses would murder us on sight for knowing too much.

Another FTA gunship came to escort us to the ceremony that
marked the signing of Tau’s revised charter and the treaty restricting their
autonomy. The new agreements put them under the
pj[
‘s thumb
for the indeflnite future. I’d never expected to be happy to see Corporate
Security come for me, but this once I didn’t have any objections.

As we stood on the roof of Hanjen’s house, waiting to get on
board, Naoh suddenly appeared beside Miya. The corpses around us swore and
fumbled for their weapons.

She pressed empty hands together, with a deferential bow
that didn’t hide either her nerve or her unspoken tension. “I am here for the
truce,” she said in self-conscious Standard. “If there is justice now, I want
to see it.” She looked at her sister. I sensed an exchange going on between
them that they shut me out of. Finally Miya held out a hand that wasn’t quite
steady. Naoh took it. They embraced with a painful joy that I could feel but
couldn’t share in.

The signing ceremony was taking place at the Aerie, the
closest thing to neutral ground the negotiators had been able to agree on. It
felt like closure, at least to me, to finish this where it had started. As we
entered the reception hall I felt a prickling sense of deja vu, seeing Sand in
his dress uniform standing there among the gathered vips in their combine
colors. Perrymeade and Kissindre, Hanjen, and most of the Hydran Council
members had already arrived, all of them going through the same motions of the
diplomatic dance. There were no other Hydrans except the three of us, representing
the Satoh.

There were no Tau vips at all, at least not yet. I felt my
surprise reflected in Miya’s mind as she hesitated beside me in the entrance
with Joby in her arrns. Joby looked around, wide-eyed as he took in all the
people, the colors shifting like an oil film on water. “Daddy!” he called out
as he spotted a CorpSec uniform across the room. But it wasn’t Natasa, and my
hope curdled as I took in the not-so-discreet scatter of armed guards around
the hall. None of the uniforms was Natasa, and even the fact that they were
wearing FTA colors didn’t reassure me when I thought about why they were here.

Miya started forward again as Perrymeade and Hanjen spotted
us and came toward us across the room. Naoh followed her like a shadow, staring
at the details of the hall, its occupants—the wide windows with their view of
the reefs, like the hungry eyes of a bird of prey gazing down on the Homeland,
on the last fragment of Hydran culture and heritage. Her own eyes were
slit-pupiled with unease, even though what we were doing here today should mean
those things were safe after all; that in the future someone looking out at
that view would see something different ... something better.

I started after them, forcing myself to keep moving as my
mind perversely turned my body into the center of a universe of stares. I told
myself it was a good sign—that it was only happening because this time I could
sense the crowd; my contact with the reefs, and Miya, had at least begun to
heal me.

But too many eyes really were looking at me, at the Hydran
clothes I wore because they were the only clothes I had left; at my cat-pupiled
Hydran eyes in a Human face .... Suddenly I didn’t feel like a Hydran, any more
than I felt Human. I felt like a freak.

Sand went on staring at me even after the rest of the room
had lost interest. I saw Lady Gyotis Binta behind him, the only other Draco vip
I knew. “So,” he said while Perrymeade and Hanjen greeted the others, “you seem
to have taken our last conversation seriously.”

I kept my face expressionless. “You can believe that, if it
makes you feel better,” I said.

He stiffened, and for a second an expression I didn’t ever
want to see again showed on his face. But then he smiled, an empty twist of his
mouth, as Lady Gyotis stepped forward beside him. “I never imagined,” she said
evenly, “when we last met, that we would meet again under circumstances like
these.”

“No, ma’am,” I murmured. “Neither did I.”

“I feel sad, somehow. It’s unfortunate that it all had to
come to this.”

“I guess that depends on your point of view,” I said. “Ma’am.”

Her control was good, but I saw her eyes flicker. Her hands
made a series of quick gestures as she glanced at Sand. He answered her the
same way, using a handtalk code I didn’t know, one that belonged strictly to
vips. A look and a peculiar smile passed between them. I couldn’t even begin to
guess what it meant; I only knew it wasn’t meaningless this time.

Sand looked back at me again as Lady Gyotis drifted away. “I’m
curious,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll humor me about this: Just exactly what is
your relationship with Draco?”

“Dracs—?” I blinked, expecting him to ask me anything but
that. “I have no relationship with Draco. It’s a null set.”

“Then your coming here to Refuge was simply a
coincidence—nothing more.”

I glanced away, to where Miya was standing with Hanjen and
Perrymeade. I watched her hand Joby into his uncle’s arms and saw the smiles on
all their faces. “No,” I murmured. I looked back at him. “But if you mean, was
I a croach for the Feds—no. Not until you forced it on me.”

His mouth twisted again; he took a drink off a drifting tray
and sipped it pointedly. The tray floated toward me. I took one too, and
swallowed it down. “I see,” he said. “Then would you tell me why you have Draco’s
logo tattooed on your ... hip?” He glanced down, like he could see through my
clothes.

I frowned, wondering whether his augmented eyes actually
could. “How do you—?”

“Your contract labor records,” he said.

“It’s not Draco’s logo.” I shook my head, still frowning. “It’s
just a lizard.”

“It’s Draco’s logo,” he said flatly. “Do you really think I
don’t know what that looks like?”

I laughed. “I can’t even remember how it got there,” I said.
“But thanks for letting me know. I’ll think of you every time I sit down.” I
turned my back on him and moved away.

I crossed the room to the one small knot of people I felt
safe with—the mixed cluster of Humans and Hydrans with Miya at its heart. She
was talking to Kissindre; they looked up together as she sensed me. Kissindre
smiled and moved away, touching my arm briefly as she made a place for me by
Miya’s side.

“We were talking about the reefs,” she said, like she wanted
me to be sure they hadn’t been talking about me. “Ways the research team can
learn more about the healing factor at the monastery, without disturbing it.”
The treaty we’d come here to witness made the last reef a Federal environmental
preserve, off-limits to any combine’s exploitation.

Tau had howled at that, just like they’d howled at the new
laws forcing them to begin integrating Hydrans into their Human workforce. From
what I’d seen Miya do—from what I’d done myself—I knew that even if those
changes ate holes in the Human population’s collective gut like acid, they
weren’t simply justice—they were right, and smart, and good for everyone. I
hoped that one day Tau would look back and wonder what the hell had taken them
so long to make it happen. The odds of that weren’t good, but they were better
than zero, which was all they’d been before.

“... about the symbiosis between the cloud-whales and the
Community, and interpreting the data,” Kissindre was saying. It took me a
minute to realize she was still talking about the reefs. She broke off. “You
are going to work with us again, aren’t you?”

I smiled. “Try and stop me.”

“Why is this taking so long?” Naoh came up behind Miya, her
hands picking at her sleeves like nervous animals. I remembered Miya’s restless
hands, when I’d first met her. “Where are the Tau people? Is this some trick—?”

“No, of course not—” Perrymeade said. He didn’t finish it,
as her stare set off his own doubt and concern.

“They will be here,” Hanjen said, his voice even, his eyes
willing his foster daughter to believe him.

“Where’s Natasa?” I asked, looking up at Joby, who was riding
contentedly on Perrymeade’s shoulders. I glanced at Miya, feeling the part of
her mind, the part of her strength, the part of her love, that would always
stay with him, just like I could feel the part of it that would always be one
with me. I imagined what a difference it could make to both Humans and Hydrans,
if they could open themselves to the possibilities I saw every time I looked
into her eyes and Joby’s.

“He should be arriving with the others,” Perrymeade said. “They’ve
been talking about making him the new District Administrator here at Riverton,
since Borosage is being transferred—”

“Transferred?” Naoh said sharply. I knew from the look she
gave Miya that she was demanding an explanation, and that she didn’t like the
answer she got.

“He’s going to prison. Right?” I demanded. “He’s not getting
out of this. There’s too much evidence of everything he’s done—” I looked away
from Perrymeade, searching for Ronin.

“Here’s the Tau delegation now,” Perrymeade murrnured, and
left my side abruptly.

Naoh watched him go, her expression darkening.

“Naoh—” Miya said. The word was both a question and a
warning. She put a hand on her sister’s arm, like she was trying to anchor her
in reality.

Naoh slapped her hand away without touching her.

Miya backed off, but her eyes stayed on her sister’s face.

I stopped watching them both as the new Tau Board entered
the room, in the flesh this time, not virtual. All of them were strangers to me,
which was good. They were as expressionless as a line of sticks.

Borosage was with them. He was still in uniform and heading a
Security team wearing Tau colors.