For a second I lost my grip on everything; the knot of denial holding me together came undone, and the fragments of my self spun away into free-fall—
I pulled myself together again, not wanting Miya to see me falter, not wanting her to think she was the one that I had doubts about. I stood with my back to her until I was completely certain that I was still on solid ground; still in Freaktown, staring out through a single filthy pane of glass at the same unreachable view.
“Bian,” Miya murmured. At first I didn’t realize that she was speaking my name. (Bian.)
“What?” I said. My voice was a shambles.
She was standing barely an arm’s length from me as I turned around. I flinched in surprise, even as she reached out to me. “Bian,” she repeated, gently, as if she was trying to remind me of something. “You are part of us now … but Naoh was right, you don’t know what that means. You need to know. Let me show you. Come with me.” She took hold of my hands, drawing me forward.
I took a deep breath and followed her back across the room. She leaned down to pick up Joby. He reached up to me. I held out my arms, and she settled him into them. The weight of his small body felt good, solid, anchoring me in reality. I saw the lines of strain above her eyes ease just a little. “Miya,” I said, “we don’t have time. Borosage isn’t going to give us the time. We’ve got to find a way to neutralize him. Tau’s already let him off his leash.”
“Naoh has a plan,” she repeated, looking distracted, looking at Joby. “She’s seen the Way. If we follow her vision, we won’t die—we’ll win. We’ll be given everything we need to rebuild our world. I trust her.…”
I kept silent, wishing that I did. For the first time since I’d lost control of my Gift, I saw a reason to be glad I still had the defenses that kept the world out. Because they kept Naoh out. Even when we were alone Miya couldn’t see the situation objectively, free of Naoh’s mind-clouding paranoia. I only saw now how much of Miya’s concentration was bound up in caring for Joby. How it could make her easy to use.
I didn’t like thinking that, but Naoh was using her, intentionally or not, using her trust, using what was good in her against her. Sucking her into the Satoh’s mindset until she was too deeply involved to see anything independently. “Who else do you trust? Hanjen? The oyasin—?”
She frowned as I mentioned Hanjen. I remembered what Naoh had said about him.
“The oyasin,” I repeated. “We need to ask her how she sees this. Tau’s probably got her under surveillance … can you get us to the monastery?”
Miya nodded. She looked dubious, but her eyes were registering me again, like I’d finally said something that didn’t short out her resolve. I watched her gather herself, felt her gather me in, the boy in my arms … the boy inside me, afraid of the dark and yet hungry for it …
And everything changed, went black/white—
* * *
We were standing inside the white warren of the monastery’s walls. A handful of running children passed us; I watched them scatter like startled mice. They darted away into doorways farther down the hall.
Then they came back, one by one. Some of them were trailed by adults, mostly women. They gathered silently at the far end of the hall to stare at us.
Grandmother appeared; the gathering separated without anyone glancing back. She moved through them toward us. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but it didn’t really matter.
“Namaste,” she said to us as placidly as if we weren’t hunted fugitives with a kidnapped child between us, but only one more family of refugees seeking shelter. “I knew you would come.”
I made a bow, following Miya’s, biting my tongue against asking how she’d known it this time. Instead I asked, “Is it safe for us to be here? Safe for you?”
Grandmother nodded once but touched her finger to her lips. “For now,” she said gently, in Hydran, as if she knew I’d understand it. She came closer, her eyes on Joby. She didn’t try to take him from me, and yet there was something in her manner that was like outstretched arms. If I’d still had any questions about whether she knew what the Satoh were doing, she’d just answered them. But watching Miya out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face change as if Grandmother had taken a burden from her—one that I couldn’t help her carry, one that I couldn’t even see. Grandmother touched Joby lightly, almost like a blessing, while he smiled at her as if he knew the touch of her hand, the touch of her mind.
“Oyasin,” Miya murmured, glancing down almost humbly. “We have come to ask you to help us see the Way clearly.” She looked at me, and I realized she was speaking out loud for my sake. “My sister says that she has seen the future. But Bian says what she sees is wrong.…” She broke off, and I saw the emptiness in her eyes, as if suddenly she couldn’t see any future at all ahead of us.
The silence stretched between them while she shared everything she’d heard with Grandmother. I waited, watching their faces.
At last Grandmother nodded. She pressed her hands together; her face lost all expression as her mind went somewhere else. I wondered whether it was into the future.
Her eyes came alive again behind the transparent veil. She looked at me. But all she said was, “We must go now.”
And before I could ask where, I felt the vortex of two minds begin to re-form space around me, pulling me and Joby away again to somewhere else.
SIXTEEN
I SUCKED IN a breath of cold air, another full of surprise as I realized where we were. “The reefs—?” I murmured. Joby squirmed and stiffened in my arms. I rubbed his back until he quieted, trying to stabilize my own senses as we adjusted to the solid ground that was suddenly under my feet again.
Miya nodded. “The oyasin … she says the Way isn’t clear to her, either. She only saw that you … we … needed to come here.” She turned to the view around us, and then, with what looked like both reverence and resignation, she made a small bow of acknowledgment.
We were standing on the river shore, but nowhere near the spot where the research team had been collecting data. The skyline of sheared hillsides and ovate hummocks, the play of light and shadow, was the same and yet entirely different, like the same stars viewed from a different world.
I thought about the team again. They were probably already back on the Human side of the river. I thought again about the half life that had been all the life I’d had, until a few days ago … the life that I’d given up entirely in order to have this one. I looked at Miya, holding my breath until the moment passed.
And then I asked, “What now?” I turned back to Grandmother, watched her turn through a circle, bowing to the beauty around us. When she’d completed the circle, she bowed again toward the deeper shadows below the cliff face. I realized there was an overhang of the reef there, maybe even a cave.
The oyasin settled herself on the stony beach, wrapped in a heavy cloak she hadn’t been wearing when we left the monastery. She looked up and saw me looking at her.
“I knew that it would be cold,” she said, smiling in that way I never knew whether to take at face value. She held out her arms. “I will keep him. While you follow the Way.”
I glanced at Miya, because Grandmother was still looking at me.
“Both of us,” Miya murmured to me, and nodded.
I carried Joby to Grandmother, settled him into her arms. He went to her willingly, and there didn’t seem to be any change in how he responded. He watched everything that was happening around him with silent curiosity; he didn’t look surprised or even worried. That was what it would be like to be a Hydran child, I thought: secure no matter where you were, as long as you could feel the presence of people who loved you inside your mind. I realized that once there must have been a time when I’d felt that way, in a time I couldn’t even remember.
Grandmother began to talk to Joby, a soft murmur that I realized was Standard speech. She waved her hand, pointing out the reefs and up into the golden evening air. I looked up and saw taku darting randomly
overhead.
I glanced at Miya, feeling her relief break over me as Grandmother freed her from the strain of holding Joby’s mind open. Still, there was nothing that resembled a positive emotion in what she was feeling now. It struck me that being Hydran didn’t mean freedom from fear, or grief, or pain, because all those things would be shared mind-to-mind as intimately as love. I wondered how much added effort it cost her to prevent her doubts from seeping into Joby’s thoughts through the bond between them and making him afraid. She’d said that he hadn’t spoken since she’d brought him across the river.…
Miya turned away as if she didn’t want me to go on looking at her. She started down to the river’s shore. It was only then that I noticed a boat pulled up onto the gravel. It was small, hardly more than a canoe, but big enough for the two of us. There were more boats half hidden in shadows beyond it.
I followed her along the shore, helped her push the boat into the water. I climbed in, as unquestioning as if I knew what the hell we were doing. Even knowing Naoh’s effect on her, somehow I trusted her the way Joby trusted her: perfectly, instinctively, without reason—in a way I’d never trusted anyone in my life.
There were no oars in the boat. There was no power unit that I could see. And yet the boat began to move, not following the current but nosing deeper into the shadows of the overhanging reef.
Taku fluttered in and out of the darkness above us. Peering up at the roof of the overhang, I made out pale random blotches on its mossy surface, like wads of cobweb … nests. I wondered whether the taku were drawn to the reefs by their psi, whether the Hydrans were, as well. I wondered again whether the creation of the taku had been a fluke of the cloud-whales’ dreams or a gift.
As we drifted farther into the darkness, the barely audible cries of the taku faded until all that was left was the soft lapping of the water. The opening reached deeper into the heart of the reef face than I’d imagined. “Is this natural?” I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper as it echoed out into the darkness. “Was it always here; did the river create it? Or did—” Your people. My people.… I broke off, not certain how to phrase it.
I saw her shoulders rise slightly in a shadow of a shrug. “I don’t know,” she murmured. Her voice was distracted, as though her thoughts were far away.
I thought about the depths of loss hidden inside those three words, the lost history of a people without a past.… I thought about my own life. I looked up again, trying to guess the dimensions of the space we were entering now. There was still enough light to see clearly by, even though the cavern entrance was far behind us. The heart of the reef was glowing, festooned with photoluminescent growth. Stirred by the motion of our passing, the hanging curtains gave off a pale aurora of light. It was warmer here too. The reef seemed to breathe like something alive, exhaling warmth into the still air, making the cold river water steam until we were adrift in a sea of fog.
All my senses felt smothered, as if we were moving through some medium besides air. But it wasn’t like drowning … it was good. I remembered my last journey into the reefs; realized the cloud-whales’ thought-residue must be affecting me again. I let it happen, wanting it, ready this time for anything.…
The boat came to a gentle stop, nudging a shore that was only a denser shadow emerging from the fog-gray mystery of the water.
Miya climbed out of the boat. I helped her pull it up onto the beach. River pebbles crunched under my feet, solid and reassuring. I could make out the dim furrows left by other boats on the stony shore. I wondered why the Hydrans chose to enter their holy place this way, when all they had to do was think themselves here. Then I remembered Hanjen telling me why he’d walked all the way from town to see Grandmother: Respect. Humility.
Miya drifted away along the shore as if she’d forgotten I was with her, or forgotten that I couldn’t read her mind unless she let me. I wondered whether the reef-rapture that was turning my thoughts to fog had hold of her too, in a way I couldn’t imagine. I followed her, forcing my body to make the effort to catch up. She seemed to know where we were going; I didn’t see any choice except to follow.
As we went on, the fogged, stagnant air grew clearer and brighter. Looking up I saw tiny sparks of light begin to show, winking on one after another, somewhere inside the masses of phosphorescent growths high above us. I wondered whether the lights were something alive, a life-form adapted to this endless night, or some manifestation of the reef matrix itself.… Or whether maybe I’d begun to hallucinate.
When Miya finally stopped moving, I looked down again. We were standing on what seemed to be an island in a lake of fog. I hadn’t felt us walk through water. I looked back the way we’d come, telling myself that we couldn’t have walked on the water, either. I glanced at Miya. Her face was clenched like a fist, as if she was struggling against something—the power of the reef, or something darker—inside herself.
In front of us on the ground lay a knee-deep pile of artifacts; things dropped there by Human—or probably Hydran—hands. They must have been brought to this place by past seekers. I wondered what the ones who’d left them had come here in search of, whether they’d believed their offering was the thing that would get them what they needed or if it had only been a personal gesture, with a meaning no one else would ever understand.
Miya stooped down, picking up something from a pile that could have been centuries- or even millennia-old. Some of the artifacts looked like nothing I’d ever seen, things from a time before Humans had come to this world, when the machinery of Hydran daily life had run on energy channeled by the mind. Some of them just looked like junk, the fallout of everyday life in a Human city, castoffs from the world across the river. I nudged a piece of scrap metal; it canted over, crushing a bouquet of flowers that I’d thought at first were real.
I looked up again as Miya dropped the thing she’d been holding. It looked like an old-fashioned manual lock, but something about it was different, incomplete. Her eyes were full of tears. “What—?” I said softly.
“Naoh,” she murmured. “And Navu.”
I bit my lip, not understanding but not able to ask. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, and she didn’t say anything else.
Finally she moved on, picking a path through the residue of grief and prayers. The darkness closed in on us until even my eyes had trouble making out the way ahead. “Miya?” I whispered, but she didn’t answer. Instead I felt her hand close over mine, leading me onward in silence.
Abruptly we came up against a surface that was somehow solid and yielding all at once, like the flesh of some unimaginable creature. She pulled me forward, forcing me face-first into the membranous wall. I felt it begin to close in on me, absorbing me. I tried to resist, starting to panic. The hard pressure of her hand locked around mine kept me moving, somehow reassuring me as if her mind was actually feeding me faith.
We merged, then emerged through the membrane’s other surface so suddenly that I staggered. She caught my weight against her.
It was pitch-black here, and the air had a pungent dankness to it. I wondered what I was breathing in; what I’d see, if I could see anything. Miya’s hand on my chest stopped my forward motion. Her hands guided me down until we were sitting on a surface my touch couldn’t identify. Still she didn’t say anything.
“What do we do now?” I whispered thickly, surprised at the difficulty I had just forming the words, as if my brain had gone to sleep.
“Wait,” she murmured. Her voice sounded far away, reluctant, as if speaking wasn’t something you did here. Her hand stroked my chest gently, almost tenderly, before it fell away.
I fought the urge to reach out, to reestablish the severed link between us. I kept my hands clenched at my sides and waited, not letting myself ask what we were waiting for.
Guidance. Insight. Answers. The words formed inside my thoughts as if someone had put them there, but it was only my own mind guessing. I didn’t believe the random psi energies of the reef were any more likely than the ran
dom motion of the stars to answer the question of what the hell we were going to do about Tau. But I waited, matching the rhythm of my breathing to Miya’s, knowing that at least here I had a chance to feel something, to interface with the world that I’d been cut off from, even if whatever it gave back to me proved as meaningless as everything else.
I pressed my hands against the unidentifiable surface of the ground, increased the pressure until they were the focus of the pain and tension that seemed to have become a part of me to the point where I wasn’t sure I could draw a breath anymore that didn’t hurt my chest. At first all I heard was the sound of my own breathing, all I saw was nothing: random patterns of phantom light, the reactive firing of neurons behind my eyes. If Miya had prayers to say or questions to ask, she asked them inside her mind, where I couldn’t hear them. My own mind was a blank slate.
But inside my head I could feel the pressure of the reef’s presence building, like the whispering of half-heard voices in an unknown tongue. As I listened, the potential energy of my tension grounded itself in the darkness, flowing out of me through my hands into the unseen, the unknown. As I let it go the phantom voices grew louder, flowed across the boundaries of my senses, becoming colors, odors, fragments of sensation that made gooseflesh crawl up my body.
I shifted, restless with sensation, felt my shoulder contact Miya. I started, as if my body had forgotten I wasn’t here alone.
She pressed closer, unexpectedly, as if she was the one who needed contact, reassurance, a guide, now. Searching in the darkness I found her hand, held it. Its coldness startled me. A tremor ran through her arm into my body. I held on, not knowing what it meant, only glad that she didn’t pull away.
I felt my concentration begin to dissolve again, coherent thought turning to bubbles on an undersea swell of indescribable stimuli … slowly reassembling into logic and recognizable images, the sense of Miya’s body pressed against mine … drifting out again into some alien sea, drawn back …