… seeing her with an impossible clarity that vision couldn’t begin to capture: seeing beauty that had nothing to do with surface features; need that had everything to do with her soul; faith that defied fate and description.… All the things that had drawn me to her like gravity—that had made me trust her, made me willing to risk my life for a stranger. I’d thrown away everything I’d struggled so hard to become to be in her world instead of the one I’d always known. Seeing myself through her mind’s eyes: finding everything that I loved about her reflected in the image my face …
… My stunned thoughts dissolved, rising and escaping, slipping through the fingers of my brain.…
… And slowly reintegrated, until I could feel her hand in mine … her mind … Her: a Hydran among Humans, knowing them as individuals, not a faceless enemy. And yet always an outsider, an alien … even though by reaching out to them she made herself an outsider among her own people. I wondered why she’d done it, why she’d been drawn to the Human side, after all that had been done to her people, all the things that made her sister hate Humans.…
But I didn’t have to wonder anymore why she’d looked at me and found her nasheirtah.…
… And dissolving into the everywhere, I knew with my last coherent thought just how much love it was possible to feel.…
… There in the everywhere her mind was open, shining, like a sanctuary; once again there was no barrier between us, no need for any kind of defense. We were one with the matrix of random energy around us … with this world, with the universe that everything was a part of. With each other … her body against mine, our bodies folding, combining, flowing through each other while the solid floor of the chamber seemed to fall away beneath us. I felt myself rise out of reality, radiant energy shining from every pore, as we were absorbed into the luminous heights of rapture. Together we were whole, together we could find the answer to any question, every need.…
And then the shining heights flooded with an acid fog of terror and grief, and reality came crashing in to claim us.
Suddenly we were two separate, lost souls again, crouched blindly in the stifling darkness. Beside me Miya was gasping with shock.
“Miya—?” I called, still stupefied by visions, not knowing what had been a hallucination, what was real, as a smothering pall of disaster filled the space around me.
I felt her hand on my arm, urging me up. “No,” I said hoarsely, so close, so close—feeling the answer we’d come for vanish like a dream at the sound of my voice. “No, Miya, wait—”
But she wouldn’t wait. She forced me up, every movement leaden after the memory of flight, and guided me back through the membranous wall of the prayer chamber, through the glimmering shadowland where the dream jetsam of Hydrans and cloud-whales coexisted.
We reached the spot where the boat lay waiting. Miya looked at it, hesitating, and then glanced up at the fog-blind distance, as if she saw something I couldn’t. And then, still without a word, she looked back at me. I felt her thoughts close around me.…
We were back on the river’s shore, standing beside Grandmother again. I held on to Miya as she reeled against me, as if the strain of always carrying me on her mind’s back had drained the last of her strength. The sun had already set. I glanced down to check the time on my databand and saw nothing but a bare scar. I looked away again, feeling dizzy.
Grandmother still held Joby in her arms. She was standing, her body straining the way Miya’s had as she gazed into the distance, searching for something I couldn’t imagine with a sense I couldn’t feel. She didn’t even react to our arrival; but Miya said, almost inaudibly, “We have to go back.”
* * *
Before I could stop her our reality changed again. The river was gone. We were standing on open ground in front of the smoking remains of a building.… The monastery. Grandmother’s home.
Something—someone—had dropped a plasma burst on it.
“Aiyeh—!” Miya fell to her knees, holding her head. Grandmother stood beyond her, rigid and silent, like a statue. Joby began to wail. I took him from Grandmother’s arms, rocked him in my own, crooning toneless, meaningless words, trying to comfort him with motion and sound, because I couldn’t do anything real for anybody.
He quieted, surprising me. His voice fell away to a soft keening; he clung to my neck, half choking me with need. Time began again: my other senses registered the reek of burning, sounds of grief and pain carrying from the distance. I realized finally that there were still other people here. Looking toward the ruins, I saw figures moving, tiny and unrecognizable from this distance.
And then, suddenly, someone else was beside us, appearing between eyeblinks. Hanjen.
I stumbled back, startled like I always was when somebody did that, but he didn’t even glance at me. All his attention was on Grandmother. He bowed, pressing her hands to his forehead … slowly raised his head again. His throat worked as if he was trying to speak. But he didn’t speak, at least not in a way that I could hear. Beside me, Miya slowly got to her feet. Her face was colorless; her eyes were empty. She turned away, and I heard her being sick.
As Hanjen released Grandmother’s hands she took his face gently between them, shaking her head. I realized suddenly what it had been about: He’d thought she was dead. We could have been dead, all of us, if we hadn’t gone to the reefs when we did. I forced myself to ask him, “Who did this—?” even though I was sure I didn’t need to. Still, somehow I needed to hear the answer.
“Tau,” Hanjen said bitterly, and I felt it like a blow, even though it was the answer I’d been expecting. He looked toward the smoking ruins. “They said that the oyasin was harboring HARM members.”
“Was anybody killed?” I whispered, barely able to speak the words this time.
“Yes,” Hanjen murmured, shaking his head. It wasn’t a denial, but a clearing motion: I remembered how death had felt, trapped inside of me, when I’d still had my telepathy; how it had saturated all my senses, filled even the air around me until I couldn’t breathe. “We don’t know how many,” he said thickly, at last. “Some people fled. Some of the survivors said that something happened to them before the explosion: That they couldn’t use their Gift—their speech became slurred, as if they’d been drugged. No one really knows what had happened, or how many escaped. I thought … the oyasin…” He broke off, glancing at her again. She was already moving away, going on foot toward the burned-out shell of the monastery, where stunned survivors still drifted like insects around a flame.
“Is there an airborne form of the drug Corporate Security uses?” Hanjen asked me.
I hesitated, remembering what had happened to me, and to Miya, when Tau had closed its fist on us back in my hotel room. “I don’t know.” Realizing as I said it that I didn’t know enough about nephase to know whether an airborne form of it was even possible. I was surprised that he didn’t either.
“There is an airborne form of the drug,” Miya murmured behind me. “It’s used for crowd control, when too many Hydrans try to gather for a rally. Draco manufactures it.”
“Oh, God,” I muttered, seeing Sand in my mind’s eye, seeing him abandoning Tau to twist in the wind.… Had he left Borosage something more—enough rope for Tau to hang itself with? I shifted Joby in my arms. He rested quietly with his head on my shoulder, almost as if I really could touch him, reassure him, somehow, with my mind. Had Borosage known where we were when they destroyed this place? Was the timing of the attack really just chance? Had they known Grandmother had taken us away … or had Tau wanted us all dead?
Hanjen looked at me again, suddenly, as if he was only now seeing me clearly. “That’s a Human child,” he said. He looked past me, and I saw him realize who the third person with us was. “Miya—?” He caught her by the arm. She didn’t resist, still pale and shaken. He looked back at Joby, at me, away at the oyasin moving among the victims in the distance. I watched his disbelief fade into resignation. He let Miya go, his mouth like a knife cut. I wonde
red what he wouldn’t say, wouldn’t even allow himself to think as he watched Grandmother.
Miya came unsteadily to my side. Her hand reached up absently to stroke Joby’s hair. I wondered whether she felt the tremor run through me as I realized what Hanjen must be thinking—who he must be blaming for what had happened here.
“The child must be returned,” Hanjen said. His voice strained, as if he’d read my mind, but he hadn’t needed to.
“I know,” Miya whispered, her own voice a thread of sound. “But then I’ll never see him again. What will become of him—?”
“You should have thought about that before you took him.” Hanjen moved away from us, walking deliberately, but still moving too quickly. He headed toward the ruined monastery and the survivors.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this—” Miya murmured in Hydran. The frayed thread of her voice snapped under the weight of the obvious.
“Yes it was,” someone said behind me. Naoh.
I turned and she was there, in the flesh. Her eyes were black pools of pain as she stared at the monastery, the huddled figures.
“When our people learn how far the Humans have gone—destroying a holy place, causing the deaths of innocent children, trying to kill an oyasin—” Her voice shook; I felt rage blow through my soul like a burning wind. Miya stiffened beside me, her own face a mask of devastation, as if her sister’s fury had immolated all coherent thought.
I felt a totally different emotion as I looked at Naoh. “Did you know this was going to happen—?”
Naoh swung around, glaring at me. “Who are you, to say that to me?” But she didn’t deny it.
“Naoh—?” Miya said, when her sister didn’t say anything more. It was half a demand, half a plea.
“I followed the Way,” Naoh whispered. “The oyasin says sometimes the Way is hard.…” She looked back at me. “My sister understands that.”
Miya sucked in a sharp breath. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, her voice rising. “That you betrayed these people to Borosage? Are you—are you—” (Insane!) Her mind screamed the word she wouldn’t speak. But as their eyes locked, I watched Miya’s expression soften, like candle wax melting in a flame.
“Miya?” I murmured, and touched her arm. She didn’t look at me, didn’t even acknowledge me. I backed away from her, shaken. I left them standing there, like one woman staring into a mirror, and started toward the place where Grandmother was still moving slowly among the survivors. Even from a distance I read pain in her every motion: the shared suffering that only I was immune to, out of everyone here. The urge to ask her whether she’d known what was going to happen here died stillborn inside me.
“Bian!” Naoh called out suddenly. “Our people had to learn! We had to let them see what will happen to them! Are you a true revolutionary? Are you truly Hydran—”
I swung around. “Hydrans don’t kill people! And they don’t use Humans to do their dirty work for them, either—” I said, my voice raw.
“You don’t understand—” She broke off as Hanjen reappeared suddenly beside her.
“Naoh!” he shouted, the single word filled with a kind of emotion I’d never heard before in a Hydran voice.
She reeled as if he’d struck her, got control and stopped him in his tracks from coming after her again. His hands trembled in front of him with an urge I understood perfectly. “Send the boy back! This is sickness! Bes’ mod!” He turned to Miya, reaching for Joby. “Give me the boy!”
“You can’t stop us!” Naoh shouted furiously. “Our people will know the truth, and they will rise up—”
“And do what?” I yelled.
“Change the world! Bring the new age, when we will have everything, and the Humans will be nothing. If enough of us cry out, the Allsoul will answer us. If you are not with us, you’re against us! You will disappear too.”
“I’m not Human—”
“No,” she said, her voice roughening. “And not Hydran. You are a mebtaku. There is no place anywhere for something like you. Miya!” She jerked her head.
Miya looked at me, grief-stricken. I knew as she looked into my eyes that I was losing her.
“Miya…?” I reached out. “Naoh, damn it, you don’t understand! Miya, talk to her, tell her about the nephase—”
My fingers closed over Miya’s shadow as they disappeared. My empty hands knotted, and I swore under my breath.
Hanjen stood watching me. He shook his head. (Every time I see you, things are worse.) He looked down, rubbing his face, smearing it with ash.
“Are you blaming me for this—?”
“No.” He looked at me blankly, as if he couldn’t imagine where I’d gotten that idea. Then, still looking at me, I saw him remember. “You heard that—?”
“I learned your language,” I said in Hydran.
He shook his head again. “But I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I only thought it.”
I bit my lip.
“You heard my thought.” He was looking at me now with something new in his eyes.
I glanced away. “Sometimes it happens.… I can’t control it.”
He half frowned, as if he was concentrating on something I couldn’t see. “You are more … present, to me.” He looked up again, searching my face. “Even with all this—” He gestured, his own face furrowing, and I knew what he meant: the stench of grief and death and pain that went beyond the physical, that was taking every ounce of his Gift and will, every fragment of concentration, to endure. “You are here.” He touched his head. “Is it Miya—?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know … or maybe the reefs. We went to a … sacred place.”
“She took you there?” It sounded like disbelief. “No Human—”
“I’m not Human!” I held up my fist, my wrist, showed him the naked flesh, nothing but the scar that the databand had always hidden. “The oyasin took us there.”
He shook his head, as if this time her motives were as inscrutable as mine. “What are you doing here?” he asked finally.
I told him as we started back toward the ruins where Grandmother was still trying to help the people she’d given refuge to. Now she was as homeless as the rest of them. As we got closer I spotted other members of the Council moving among the injured, and strangers who must have been the local equivalent of medics.
Grandmother looked up as we reached her side. As our eyes met, a shock wave of grief, a sense of age, overwhelmed me. The contact was gone before I could even react. Suddenly I wanted to give her all the strength I had left in my mind, in my body. But my mind couldn’t reach her. I didn’t offer her my hand, just stood useless and silent while Hanjen spoke with her, his voice barely audible against the background noise. I wondered why he was speaking out loud, if he was actually doing it for my sake or if it was just easier, when the cacophony of suffering must be so much louder inside their heads. “… We’ve found a place where all of you can stay safely, for now. I’ll find a better place. We’ll rebuild.… Is there any other help that I can give you—?”
Grandmother shook her head. “We need nothing else that you can give us.” She glanced away, at the shadow-figures moving brokenly past us. “What has been taken away today, only time can give back.” She looked at me then, suddenly. “Only time, Bian,” she murmured, and touched my face. “You understand … only time.”
I swallowed, suddenly choking on grief, and nodded.
“What is he doing here—?” Someone jerked me around where I stood: one of the Council members.
“He is with me,” Hanjen said quickly.
“He is with me,” Grandmother said. “He is with us now.”
A refugee. A Refugee. I looked past Grandmother at the stunned, uncomprehending faces all around her. Don’t let them turn you into one, Wauno had said. Them. Tan.… HARM. Miya.
The Council member frowned. He let go of me as if I was hot. Whatever he said or thought then, I couldn’t feel it, but I sa
w the look in his eyes. His hand spasmed. He turned away, gesturing for Hanjen to follow. Other Council members joined them. I watched them arguing silently, glancing my way but not at me—at the ruins. I didn’t have to hear them to guess the focus of the argument.
I looked back at Grandmother. The wind that billowed her cloak and tore at her veil was cold and full of ashes. “She’s gone.… What should I do?” I asked finally. “I don’t know what to do.”
Grandmother blinked. “Follow the Way.…” She cocked her head when I didn’t say anything. “Did you feel nothing?”
I shook my head. We didn’t have enough time— I stopped the thought before it could form into words. “I saw Miya.” Saw into her, shared her mind, understood … joined. I knew the effect that our joining had had on her, how she’d seen me, what she’d found inside my heart and mind. It had been enough to make her love me, but it hadn’t been enough to keep her from leaving me behind.
“Then perhaps she is the answer for you,” Grandmother said, waiting just long enough to be sure I thought of it first. “The Way will lead you to her. Or perhaps both of you will only find the Way together.”
“But she’s gone.”
“She is with Naoh.”
“I know—”
“Naoh is bes’ mod.”
“Bes’ mod?” I said. The words seemed to mean “nerve storm.”
Grandmother nodded like I had some idea what I was talking about, or she did. “And she is very powerful.” Her hand touched her head. “She draws other lost ones to her. She feeds on their power. Miya has been taken by the storm.”
“But—”
She held up her hand, as if she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “You are silence—the silence at the storm’s eye. Bian, she needs your silence.”
I shook my head, not sure if I understood anything she was telling me. “But how can I find her?”
She bent her head. “Follow the Way.”
“But—”
“Oyasin.” Hanjen was back beside us. He bowed to her, then touched my arm—something Hydrans seemed to do habitually, at least to me. I wondered whether it was the only way they could think of to get my attention. He nodded like he was asking me to follow him.