The two Hydrans went on staring, their faces expressionless. Maybe they didn’t speak Standard. The bat-thing fluttered around them like fear made visible. I kept waiting for it to attack me, the way the one at the Council meeting had. This one kept its distance.
Finally I looked away from them, down at the small globe resting against my foot. I leaned over to pick it up, and a different kind of déjà vu fired every nerve-ending from my fingertips to my brain: It was warm, not cold like glass, with an image inside it that could be changed at a whim, by a thought.… Just the way I’d known it would be. This time the image was a bat-thing. I sat back, cupping it in my hands, concentrating. Trying to make the image transform into something else, anything else—
Nothing happened inside the globe or inside my head. I looked up and saw the two Hydrans watching me.
They glanced at each other then, touching their heads and grimacing. The one on the left said, “Why did she bring that freak here?”
“Maybe so we can see for ourselves what happens if we get too friendly with the Humans.” The second one smirked; his elbow dug the first one in the side. They laughed.
It took me a couple of breaths to realize that they were speaking Hydran … and that I understood it. They were communicating out loud on purpose, because they thought I didn’t understand their language, laughing at me to prove they weren’t afraid of me.
I thought about it a little longer, listened to them make a few more remarks, sorted through the datafeed still downloading the Hydran language into my brain. And then, very carefully, I said, “Call me anything you want to. Just don’t think I won’t know it.” In Hydran.
They froze, their surprise as naked as if I’d sent the thought straight into their minds.
Miya reappeared in the doorway. “Who said that—?” She looked at me. “You—?” She was holding a child. A human child. Joby. “You know our language?” she demanded, in Hydran.
“For about an hour now,” I answered in Hydran, surprised to find that speaking it was easier than understanding someone else. “I’ll be better at it tomorrow.” I forced a smile, watching her expression turn unreadable. Hearing myself speak Hydran was like dreaming wide awake.
“This is Joby—?” I asked. Miya’s eyes warned me off as I started toward her. I slowed, approaching her and the boy as carefully as I could.
Joby lifted his head from her shoulder to look at me. His eyes were wide and dark, human eyes. He was wrapped in layers of heavy sweaters; a knitted cap was pulled down over his ears to protect him from the cold. His face was soft with uncertainty, but he could have been any little boy just wakened out of sleep. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him.
“Hey, Joby.” I smiled at him, and after a moment the ghost of a smile touched his mouth too. He rubbed his face. Miya moved forward this time, bringing him closer to me. He put out a hand, touched my ear, the earring I wore in it.
He pulled his hand back again. The bat-thing appeared over his head, fluttering around him, still making sounds so high that I could barely hear them. He watched it fly, gravely.
I glanced at Miya, expecting to find her still watching me, judging me, not expecting the look of strained concentration that shut me out entirely. She kissed Joby gently on the top of his head and turned away, carrying him back into the darkened room.
I followed her this time. The others didn’t try to stop me. I stood in the doorway as she settled him on a sleeping mat and pulled a blanket over him. She sat beside him on the floor, with her hand stroking his hair.
“I thought he had neurological damage,” I said. “He doesn’t look damaged.”
She glanced up, startled. Her face closed as her attention left him for me. She took her hand away from his head, deliberately; her look forced me to keep watching him.
I watched him shift under the blanket, his arms and legs drawing up and in until he was curled like a fetus. He began to make a sound, the high, thin keening I’d heard before. It was worse, seeing it happen in front of my eyes. I forced myself to go on watching, but I didn’t want to.
“You see?” she said, almost angrily. And then, almost wearily, she said, “You see.”
I nodded, looking away finally, looking down.
The keening stopped as she turned back to him; I imagined her reaching out to him with her mind as she reached out with her hand, soothing and reassuring him.
At last she took her hand away. He lay quietly, breathing softly, almost asleep. She got to her feet and came toward me; I stepped back into the main room as she unhooked a blanket and dropped it across the doorway behind us.
“He seemed … so normal,” I muttered, and had a hard time meeting her eyes.
She leaned against the wall, as if suddenly everything had gotten to be too much effort.
“You have to do everything for him?” I asked, but it wasn’t really a question. “Without you—”
She stared into space, holding on to herself as if she were still holding Joby. “Without me he has no control over his autonomic nervous system … he’s trapped inside himself.”
“Is he aware of what’s going on around him, without you? Does he get any input?”
“Some.” She moved away from the wall, glancing back at the doorway as she crossed the room. “He has great difficulty making sense of what he does get, unless I help him to pattern it. When he’s with his parents—” She broke off self-consciously, moved to sit down on the bench by the wall, drawing her feet up.
I let my breath out as I realized that she’d just answered one of the doubts that had been on my mind across the river: She really hadn’t been lying to me. She hadn’t kidnapped Joby to make some point by hurting or killing him.
Her whole body folded in on itself for a long moment before she raised her head again. “At least he knows them, now, when they’re with him.…”
I watched her blink too much as she glanced at the two other Hydrans. They were sitting on the floor now, cross-legged and still, watching us. She was speaking Standard again, and I suspected that it wasn’t just for my sake. She was a part of HARM, I didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that; she’d taken Joby because she believed it would help her people, even though right then I couldn’t imagine how.
But it was just as obvious that she wasn’t happy about betraying the people whose child she’d taken, even if they were human. I didn’t press her about the questions that were still on my mind. Somehow just knowing this much made the rest of the answers easier to wait for. I glanced toward the room where Joby was sleeping again. “Is he ever going to be any better?”
She looked surprised, like she’d been expecting the obvious questions. “He is better—better than when I began doing therapy for him. Whenever I work with him, I help him pattern what input his brain receives; each time his mind retains some of the patterning. Eventually he should be able to interact on his own. He’s so strong, and he wants it so much—” She broke off again, biting her lips, as if she’d suddenly remembered how things had changed for both of them.
I remembered the holo I’d seen of Joby. She was right; he was better now, if what I’d seen tonight was any proof. I looked at her face, seeing the fatigue and strain that were just as clear, now that I knew how much it had cost her to work with him … what it had cost her to bring him here. I tried again to make the two things fit together: why a human-hating Hydran radical would work so hard to heal a human child if she’d only intended to use him like this. I couldn’t make them fit, any more than I could read her mind … any more than I could stop looking at her face, or believing everything I saw in her eyes.…
I looked away, at the two men still sitting together near the room’s other entrance—probably the one that led to the outside, from the way they were watching it. There was nothing else in the room except the heavy fiber rug they were sitting on. Its surface was littered with food containers and bits of unidentifiable trash. The rug was so worn that I couldn’t tell what color its patterned surface had orig
inally been, or whether the faded blotches had ever been a pattern and not random stains. We were somewhere in Freaktown, but it could have been a room in Oldcity.
I looked back at Miya. “They’ll never let you see Joby again, once he’s returned to his parents.…” I forced myself to finish it. “What’s going to happen to him then? Or isn’t he going home—?”
“Of course he is,” she snapped, but she shook her head, as if she was shaking off doubt. “The Council does nothing except get rich at the expense of the Community. Someone has to fight for our future, before we don’t have one left—” She broke off. “Our demands are not unreasonable. The FTA observers are here because Tau broke promises, not just to Contract Labor but to its own citizens. We want the FTA to see that Tau has never kept a promise to us. All we want is justice … and there can never be any justice until someone knows the truth.” Her hands tightened over the edge of the bench. “We’ll return Joby to the FTA’s observers, when they come. And one of our demands will be that I’m allowed to go on caring for Joby, to prove what our Gift has to offer Humans. To prove we can be trusted—”
“Well, you’re off to a great start,” I said.
Her eyes glanced off my face, and she frowned. She folded her arms and crossed her legs, as if her whole body was shutting me out.
“Miya.…” I looked up at the small, high window above our heads. Its surface was fogged with moisture; I couldn’t see out. The bat-thing crouched on the window ledge, watching us, calm but alert. “I can see how much you care about Joby. And I believe HARM only wants to make things better for Hydrans. But this—kidnapping—doesn’t make sense. You’ve spent a lot of time across the river. You know Tau’s Board will never see the situation HARM’s way—”
“If they try to lie to us, we’ll know,” she said flatly.
“They can lie to each other!” I said. “And you’d never know that until it was too late.” She went on looking at me, but suddenly I felt like I was talking to a personality sim; the lights were on, but she wasn’t home anymore. “What made you—made HARM—believe a combine Board would count the life of one child equal to their own self-interest?”
“You don’t—”
“Miya!” A woman’s voice, hard with anger, called her name behind me. I felt a sudden draft.
Something pulled me around where I stood, almost pulling me off my feet. I caught my balance, suddenly face-to-face with another Hydran stranger. Invisible hands of thought held me in front of her as she looked me over. I felt her try my mind’s defenses; felt them turn her back. Three more Hydrans, a woman and two men, had materialized behind her. They were dressed like the two men already standing across the room; the woman holding me prisoner looked like the rest of them. But there was no question in my mind that she was their leader.
She made a noise that was half querulous, half relieved, as if she’d searched me mentally and discovered I was unarmed. Her telekinetic snare let me go, slamming me back against the wall.
As she turned toward Miya again, I realized that something about her was familiar. The Hydrans I’d met on this world still looked more alike than different to me; the differences between Hydrans and humans still stood out more than their individual features. But this time I was sure of the resemblance—in their faces, in the way they moved; in the way something about them held my eyes even when I was free to look away: She was Miya’s sister.
Their expressions and gestures were all I needed to tell me they were arguing. I didn’t have to guess why. The two HARM members who’d been sitting sullenly across the room got up and joined in; probably they’d called for the reinforcements. None of them looked at me now, like I’d become as invisible physically as I was mentally.
Finally I said, in Hydran, “I’m here. Why don’t you ask me about it?”
Miya’s sister turned back to me. “Because you have nothing to do with it,” she snapped in Hydran. But her eyes stayed on me too long. I felt her probe my defenses again, trying to be certain that my mind was really as walled in as it seemed.
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have Joby,” I said. “If it wasn’t for me, your sister would be drugged in a cell on the other side of the river, with the Corpses trying to beat everything she knows about you out of her.”
She frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Personal experience.” I touched my face.
She shook her head. “I mean, how do you know our language? How do you know she is my sister?” She jerked her head at Miya.
I shrugged. “I accessed a datafeed. And I used my eyes.”
“Or maybe Tau gave you the information, along with the beating, to make us believe you,” she said. “How can we know for sure, when your mind is closed to us?”
I laughed as I thought about what she’d see if she could read my mind. She glared at me. I stopped laughing as I realized there was nothing funny about my situation here. Suddenly nothing was funny, or simple: not for me, not for Joby or his parents, not for anyone on this side of the river. I glanced toward Miya.
She realized it too. “Naoh,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t have brought him here if I wasn’t sure about him.”
“How can you be sure? He’s closed!” Naoh touched her head. “I’m not sure about you, since that night—” She broke off. I looked at Miya, surprised.
Emotion darted like a silver fish deep in Miya’s eyes; was gone again, even as I realized that same emotion had been there every time she looked at me.
“I don’t know why you brought him at all,” Naoh said, pulling her sister’s attention back. “Why are you obsessed with this—halfbreed?”
Miya flushed. “He saved my life! And without him, where would our future be?”
Naoh only shook her head, frowning. She turned back to me. “If anyone tries to find this place, because of you”—she made what I took for an obscene hand gesture—“they’ll find it empty.”
I didn’t try to answer. I was having enough difficulty just following the flood of spoken Hydran, the unspoken subtexts.
“What were you doing at a Council meeting,” Naoh demanded, “with Hanjen and those other da kah traitors, and Tau’s Hydran Affairs Agent?”
I wondered what da kah meant. Probably the human version of it had four letters. There was no profanity at all in my Hydran headfile; Tau even censored its translator programs. “Tau made me go to the Council meeting,” I said. “Can you speak more slowly—I’m not very good at this yet. The other night I was just … in the wrong place,” wondering suddenly if there really was such a thing as an innocent bystander. “I came to Refuge to do research—”
“To try to ‘explain’ the reefs and ‘understand’ the cloud-whales?” Naoh said, her voice knife-edged. “Only Humans would think of that.”
“Spare me,” I said. “I’m stuck in the middle of this because of you people, and I don’t like that. But I am half Hydran; I wouldn’t do anything that would hurt the Community. All I want is for the boy to get safely home. All Tau really wants is to get the boy back. It’s not too late—”
“No. This is what Tau wants—!” Naoh said fiercely. A jug sitting on the floor flew up into the air, just missing my head, and smashed down. Shards pelted my feet. “They want that, for us! Until nothing is left.”
“Naoh!” Miya said; she jerked her head toward the room where Joby slept.
I toed the smashed pottery on the floor around my feet. “If you think that’s what Tau wants, then what do you expect to get out of committing acts of terrorism, except more trouble?”
Naoh shook her head, like I was some brainwipe who’d exhausted the last of her patience. She glanced at Miya and pointed her hand at me.
Miya hunched forward on the bench, looking resigned. In Standard, she said, “Naoh wants me to explain, because she finds speaking—” She broke off, like she’d been about to say to you. “She finds it … tiring. I’m used to it.” She sighed, locking her hands over one knee. “Obviously, we know about the FTA’s inve
stigation of Tau.” Probably because she’d told them. “How often would we have a chance to … communicate”—she touched her head—”with someone who might actually help us against Tau? Naoh had a sending; she saw the Way—”
Miya hesitated, searching my face for comprehension. She looked relieved as I nodded. “We have to make ourselves felt, now. There will never be another chance like this. Naoh saw it: we have to reach them now; we had to do something that would make them understand our pain.”
I glanced at the darkened doorway. “So you took Joby.” I wondered whose idea that had been. Somehow I didn’t think it had been hers. “That must have been a hard thing to do,” I said.
Her head came up; her eyes filled with something I almost thought was gratitude. “Yes,” she murmured. “But I had to do it.” She looked at her sister.
“The Feds don’t even know about the kidnapping,” I said. “And I don’t think they’re going to hear about it from Tau.”
“But they have to find out,” Miya repeated. “Taking Joby will bring us everything we’ve fought for. Naoh saw the Way.” She glanced at Naoh while something silent went on between them.
“Tau censors its communications and media web; you ought to know that. If they don’t want the Feds to hear about the kidnapping, then the Feds won’t. Joby’s parents aren’t going to talk if Tau tells them not to. It would be treason.”
“But you can tell them!” Naoh said. “Now I see—it was meant to happen, your coming here. You only followed the Way.” She glanced at Miya, back at me; something made me look away from her eyes. “Because of you, the FTA will hear us out.”
“Do you really believe their coming here will do any good?” I asked.
“Don’t you?” she demanded. “You live with the Humans. The combines are afraid of the FTA—”
I nodded. “But…” I had a sudden image of the two Feds. Givechy and Osuna, coming here. But the FTA doesn’t give a damn about you. I looked down again.
Miya frowned, as if she was so used to reading a human face that she saw the truth in mine. I watched her doubt spread to Naoh and then the others waiting impassively around us.