“Why should you be any better than the rest of them?” I asked, since he seemed to feel that he was.
“I am a daesin,” he said. “The closest word you have for it is ‘ombudsman.’ I am trained to avoid the contagious emotion that overtook the Council. But I allowed my—suspicions to control me.”
“I thought only humans did that,” I said.
He frowned. “No.”
“It wasn’t my choice to attend that meeting,” I said. “Just so you know.”
“I did not think so.” He shook his head. “You asked why we don’t just show the radicals what is wrong with their way of seeing. We would, but they will not let us. They are klin; they are … of one mind. A closed set to anyone who does not share their beliefs. They have shut us out as completely as you have—but selfishly.”
I frowned this time. “I thought Hydrans didn’t do that to each other. I thought they were always sharing their thoughts, their emotions, with each other, so that there were never any misunderstandings.”
He laughed, but not as if he thought it was funny. “That’s what we have always wanted to believe ourselves. Maybe it was even true, once, when our civilization was whole. Or perhaps not even then. But anyway our past is gone. Now we live in the time of the Humans, and no one really knows what the truth is anymore.”
I studied my hands, not knowing which frayed end of the conversation to pick up, or whether I should even try.
He shook his head. “There is really nothing else that I can tell you, or Tau, about the kidnapping, that Tau does not already know. It was done by HARM, and Tau knows that. But we do not know where they disappear to, any more than Tau does. There are thousands of hectares of emptiness in the Homeland. HARM can be anywhere they choose, from moment to moment.… But we do want to help you find the boy. Please assure Agent Perrymeade that if we discover anything, we will send word—”
I rubbed my neck, feeling as if I’d suddenly stopped existing, even as a halfbreed with brain damage; that he was only seeing the Humans’ pawn again. I wondered whether everything he’d said to me had been just as calculated. I didn’t want to believe that, but I couldn’t prove anything either way. His mood seemed to settle on me like a weight. I remembered what he’d said about catching an emotion like a disease. I ought to be immune, if anyone was. The mood was my own, and it wasn’t going to improve when I left this place.
I glanced at Grandmother. She was making the smoke spiral and braid like Hanjen and I were already gone from the room. I wondered if that was a kind of prayer. I wondered what she was praying for and where she thought the answers were going to come from.
Hanjen looked at Grandmother too, suddenly, as if she’d said something. She had—something I couldn’t hear. The thread of smoke drifted up, undisturbed, as she let it go.
Hanjen got to his feet. He bowed to Grandmother and then to me. “I must go. It’s a long walk back to town. I hope the rest of your visit to our world is … productive.”
I watched him go out, wondering why he was leaving. I suddenly felt as left out of what went on here as I’d been at the Council meeting.
I looked back at Grandmother, wondering what she’d told him. Maybe his leaving hadn’t meant anything at all—maybe I just didn’t understand the way anything happened on this side of the river.
Somebody entered the room. I turned, half expecting to see Hanjen again. But it was Wauno.
Wauno made his bow to Grandmother, murmured “Namaste,” and looked at me. “You ready?”
I got up, wondering suddenly if Wauno’s arrival had had anything to do with Hanjen’s leaving. I looked toward Grandmother, but she only bowed her head and murmured, “Namaste, Bian.”
“Namaste, oyasin,” I said, feeling unanchored as I said it, lost somewhere between gratitude and frustration. As I followed Wauno out, I looked back to see the faces of half a dozen children peering at us from doorways. I wondered again how many Hydrans lived in this place; how many of them had been mentally listening in on what was said in that room. Half a hundred of them could have been eavesdropping, and I never would have known. Realizing that made my skin prickle; made me feel Human.
Maybe Wauno felt the same way. We were in the transport, rising up into the night, before he said anything. And then it was only, “You want to go back to the hotel?” Nothing about what I’d thought of Grandmother, or what I’d thought of dinner … whether I’d learned anything. I wondered if the look on my face as we walked out was what had kept him from asking. I wondered if he was sorry he’d thought of this.
I couldn’t give him any reassurances, because I wasn’t certain how I felt about it myself. I forced my thoughts back across the river, remembering where I really belonged. My mouth pulled down as I remembered Ezra, the blood on his face, the look on Kissindre’s face and what it was probably going to mean when I reached the other side. “Do I have a choice?”
Wauno shook his head. “Not really. Not this time of night.”
I checked my databand, surprised as I saw how much time had passed. “What would you do?”
“Go to sleep,” he said. “I like to get up about five hours from now.”
I sighed. “How’s Ezra?”
He shrugged. “You broke his nose. I took them to a clinic.”
“Shit.…” I leaned back into the seat, resting my head.
“He had it coming.”
“She’s not going to see it that way.” I remembered the look on Kissindre’s face.
Wauno didn’t say anything.
“How did she seem?” I asked, finally.
“Pretty grim.”
I looked out at the night, at Tau Riverton filling the darkness below us, sucking me down toward light and order and retribution.
NINE
WAUNO LEFT ME at the hotel. I watched the transport rise until I lost sight of it in the wash of artificial light. The lamppost I’d leaned against asked me if I needed anything. I went inside.
Kissindre was sitting in the lobby. She was still wearing her coat and hat. I stopped when I saw her.
“You broke his nose,” she said.
“I know.” I looked away as her expression registered. “I’m sorry.” But I wasn’t. And she knew it. I stood there grimacing as if I was afraid of being hit.
She jerked her head toward the hotel’s bar-and-eatery. “Let’s talk. In there.” I didn’t figure she was hungry. She wanted neutral ground.
The room was almost empty; there wasn’t a big tourist trade in Riverton, and the locals were used to curfews. We settled into a dark corner, in the false privacy of a booth. Music oozed out of the walls, gentle and plangent; the kind of music that made you ache inside and hate yourself for it. I stared at the wall on my right, trying to decide without touching it whether it was actually wood or just high-quality sim. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe nothing did. I stuck a camph into my mouth and ordered a drink from the touchboard. A minute later the drink slid out of the wall, answering my question.
“You use a lot of drugs,” Kissindre said.
I looked up at her, wondering what she meant by that. “I can handle it,” I said. “It doesn’t affect my work.”
“Why do you need them?”
“Who says I need them?” I took the camph out of my mouth, looked at it. I picked up the drink and drank it. It tasted weak. I stuck the camph back into my mouth. There was only one drug that could give me what I really wanted—give me back my psi. But to let myself use it would be like walking on broken legs. Her eyes were still on me. I frowned, looking away. “I like it. So do you.”
She pulled her hat off, rumpling her hair, and opened her coat. She ordered herself a drink. When it came, she sat looking at it. Finally she drank it down in one swallow, grimacing. “No, I don’t. But I’m angry—I’m very angry.” She didn’t sound angry; she sounded tired. She didn’t meet my eyes. “You could have killed Ezra, hitting him like that.”
“No, I couldn’t,” I said. “I knew what I was doing. Even if he di
dn’t.”
She looked up. “You meant to break his nose?”
“I didn’t break his nose,” I said. “He broke his nose.”
I expected her to tell me I was full of shit. Instead she leaned on her elbows, covering her eyes with her hands. I wondered why she wouldn’t go on looking at me, whether she was afraid to or just fed up. “Damn it, nothing has gone the way I wanted it to.… Ever since we got here, it’s been one damn thing after another, until I can’t think straight.” She looked up at me, finally. “I hate this.”
I shifted in my seat, not needing her to tell me I’d been the cause of it. I tried to order another drink; a synthetic voice told me I’d had enough. “Fuck you too,” I muttered. Kissindre looked up at me again. I fumbled in my pockets for another camph, found the pack, and pulled it out. It was empty. I wadded it up and threw it on the table. An invisible hand swept it, and our empty glasses, into some secret compartment in the imaginary wood surface. I leaned back, removing my hands from the perfectly clean tabletop.
Kissindre said, “This can’t go on. The whole project will end up terminated.”
“I know,” I said.
“I know you and Ezra never liked each other. I thought at least you were intelligent enough to work together on something important without letting your testosterone poisoning get out of hand. Obviously I was wrong.” Her hands closed over the table’s edge. “God, I didn’t want this to happen, but you’re making me do it … I told Ezra he’s off the project.”
Damn— I shut my eyes. “What?” I opened them again.
“I told Ezra he’s off the project. He’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Ezra?” I said.
She looked at me the way I’d just looked at her.
“Why him? Why not me? He’s your habit. I’m the one who caused the trouble with Tau.”
She half frowned. “You weren’t to blame for that,” she said. “For God’s sake, you were the victim, remember?” She shook her head. “And tonight—Ezra insulted our host, our informant. He couldn’t keep his bigoted mouth shut for one evening. He—” She looked into my eyes, with their long slit pupils. He’d called me a freak. She pushed loose strands of hair back from her face. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for years. Like I never really saw this world, in all my visits here.… And I never really saw him. The truth was always there; I just didn’t see it.” She looked away, making a pain noise that tried to pass for a laugh. “I can’t go on pretending I don’t see it.” Her hands released the tabletop suddenly.
“Listen,” I said, “it makes more sense for me to go, instead of him. The Tau government hates psions, not—” I broke off, before I said assholes.
“‘Assholes’?” Her mouth formed something that wasn’t exactly a smile. I shrugged, looking away. “You were right. That’s what he was. God damn him—” Her mouth quivered, suddenly.
“Are you doing this for me?” I said. “Don’t. I can take care of myself.”
“Give me more credit,” she said, handing me back my own line. “I’m doing it for the project. Because my research needs you more than it needs a stats quantifier. I can get one of those anywhere. I only picked Ezra because I thought we wanted to be together—” She broke off again.
“You’ve had fights before. You always get over it. Maybe you ought to wait, before you—”
She was silent for a moment. “Tell me,” she said, “when the universe eventually ends, will you feel guilty about that?”
It startled a laugh out of me. “Maybe.”
She half smiled. “Well, don’t feel guilty about this. I always thought Ezra didn’t like you because he was jealous of how easily you learned things. Of how you looked at me, sometimes—or he said you did, anyway—” She glanced down, tugging at the end of her single thick braid. “I thought at least it meant he loved me.”
“You don’t think that’s true?”
“Yes,” she said, and her voice broke. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life lying to myself, so that I can go on loving him.” She took a deep breath.
We sat looking at each other for a long time, not speaking, not moving. Finally the voice that had told me I was drunk told us that the bar was closing for the night.
Kissindre lurched like a startled sleepwalker and got up from her seat. I followed her out of the bar, neither of us saying anything. We were the only ones in the lift, going up.
We walked together down the hall, still silent, until I reached my room. I stopped; she stopped too, glancing on down the hallway. She looked back at the lift.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I need to get a separate room.” She shook her head, looking again at the door to the room she’d shared with Ezra, seeing nothing where the future had been until tonight. Finally she looked at me.
I touched my door; it opened. “You want to come in?”
She looked uncertain, but she nodded. She went ahead of me into the room. My eyes tracked her motion, even though I tried not to.
I closed the door. She turned back, looking at me as the door silently shut. I felt the pale room close us in, like a jail cell. The far wall had long since opaqued for the night. I ordered it to polarize again.
The star-patterned grid of the city filled my eyes. I took a deep breath, feeling the fist of my tension ease. Kissindre sat down on my bed, looking out at the view but not reacting. I sat in a chair, feeling the soft formless seat reshape itself around me. The sensation made me want to get up again. I made myself go on sitting, remembering the stillness of the Hydrans. “How long were you and Ezra together?” I asked, when she still didn’t say anything or do anything.
“I can’t even remember,” she murmured. She looked back at me, finally. “We met at the study center in Quarro.”
“You’re from Ardattee?” I said. “I thought you were from Mysena.”
“My family sent me to school in Quarro. They thought it would give me the best education.” Her smile filled with irony. “Ezra was so—” She glanced away. “He was everything Quarro was supposed to be about. Everything my family admired … everything I thought I ought to want. And he wanted me … I’d never been wanted like that.” Her gaze turned distant.
I thought about them together in Quarro, moving through a world of light and privilege: how they’d met, shared, learned, slept together. I thought about my life, moving on a parallel track with theirs, buried alive in Quarro’s Oldcity.
“Aren’t you from Quarro?” she asked. “Ezra said—”
“No.” I got up from my seat, moved to the window/wall and stood looking out.
When I looked back at her she was crying, the tears seeping out through the fingers of the hand she’d pressed against her eyes to stop them. “Damn him—”
I wondered what she was thinking now—what he’d said to her when she told him to get out of her life; how ugly the words had been. I wondered what she was feeling—lost? angry? I couldn’t tell. It made me feel helpless, because I didn’t know what to do if I couldn’t tell.
She got up and started for the door.
I crossed the room before she got there. “I know how it feels,” I said. I caught her gently by the shoulders and made her look at me.
“You do?” she said thickly, looking back at me like she actually believed it might be true. And all the while I couldn’t even imagine what she’d seen in him.
“No.” I let my hands drop. “How could I even imagine what you feel?” I remembered holding someone else, far away, long ago: Jule taMing, her long dark hair slipping down across her face as I held her … how I’d known what she’d suffered, known what she needed … just like she’d known everything about me. I turned away, shaking my head.
“It must be terrible,” Kissindre said softly.
“What?” I turned back, startled.
“To lose that. To lose something like the Gift.”
I stood staring at her, stupidly.
“My uncle told me.”
“God,” I mutte
red.
“Cat—” she said, and broke off.
I looked away, down, out at the night, anywhere but at her. I’d known her for years now, worked beside her, studied with her, been her friend—and nothing more. I’d always stopped short of crossing that line, never tried to make our relationship anything more, because I’d thought she loved Ezra. I’d thought the way she looked at me sometimes was nothing more than curiosity.
I’d never had the courage to ask outright … I’d never had any way to know for sure. But all the time that I’d believed she wanted someone else, I’d wanted to be in a place like this with her, alone with her, wanted it so much some nights that I couldn’t sleep.
And now I only wanted her to leave.
“Talk to me,” she murmured. “In all the time we’ve worked together, you’ve never talked about you.”
I turned back, finally. “You never asked,” I said.
This time she looked down. “Maybe I was afraid.…” I thought about the way she’d always acted—reacted—around me. She wasn’t acting that way now. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Why?” I asked. But I already knew the answer: Because she was a xenologist.… Because I was strange.
“Because I want you so much it makes my teeth hurt,” she whispered, and her face turned scarlet. “I never wanted Ezra the way I want you.”
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her, kissed her for a long time, because I’d wanted to kiss her for such a long time, to hold her, to know what it was like to be her lover.
We drifted back across the room to the bed. I followed her down onto it, not letting her go as we went on kissing, tasting the strange spices that breathed from our skin, feeling my hands slide over the warm contours of her body as her shirt came undone. Her hands were on me, loosening my shirt, my pants, touching my chest, touching me all over.