He nodded, resting his head in his hands again. “I always believed Miya was the strong one—in her Gift and her resolve. But perhaps Naoh’s sickness is stronger than both of them.”
“Miya said that Naoh’s ‘vision’ made her Gift more powerful—or gave her more reason to use it.”
“I have seen enough perversions of the Gift in my lifetime to believe that anything is possible.” His voice was heavy with resignation.
“Miya loves Joby, maybe too much.…” The words caught in my throat like thorns. Miya didn’t need a reason to love him like that, beyond who she was, and who he was. But to lose him, knowing she’d never see him again, never have a child of her own.… “She’s afraid of losing him to the Humans,” I said, at last. “That makes her vulnerable.”
Don’t get involved. That was what Oldcity had taught me. The cost was too high. Hope, trust, love—they were only stones around your neck when you were already drowning. But then Jule taMing had come into my life and made me believe that a lifeline of trust, an outstretched hand, were all that could save you.…
Now, sitting here, I wondered for the first time since then if maybe the streets had been right.
“What is your involvement with Miya?” Hanjen asked me, suddenly, sharply.
I looked up, startled. “I … We…” I took a deep breath. “Nasheirtah.…” Suddenly certain, as I said it, that Jule taMing had always known the truth.
“Nasheirtah?” He stared at me. I wondered what he found so unbelievable: that she could have any feeling at all for somebody damaged the way I was or that somebody like me was capable of loving anyone that way.
But then he reached over and touched my shoulder, as gently as a thought. He smiled, painfully, before he drew his hand back again. I wondered which of us was more surprised.
I rested my head on my hands, staring at the dark years of Hydran history trapped in the wood grain of the table surface. “I have to find Miya,” I said, finally. I looked up at him when he didn’t answer. “How? Tell me how to do that. You must be able to … track her mind-print, if you’ve known her for so long—”
He nodded, the lines deepening in his weathered face. He looked sucked dry of any emotion, no matter how painful or urgent, now. “I can probably find her, if she’s still here in the city. If Naoh has taken them into the outback, it will be virtually impossible.” He rubbed his face. “But I must sleep first. You should rest too, or you will be no good to Miya or anyone.” He got slowly to his feet.
I opened my mouth to say that we didn’t have time. I looked down at my strengthless body barely supported by the tabletop. Finally I nodded.
“You are welcome to a bed.” He gestured toward a side room before he faded like a ghost through another doorway and into darkness.
I went into the room. It wasn’t a bed I found—it was a kind of hammock, suspended midway between the ceiling and the floor. I went to it, put my hands on it. It was chest-high; the only way I could see to get into it would be to levitate myself. I sighed, and dumped the bedding out onto the floor. I lay down on the hard, cold tiles and rolled up in the blankets. I was asleep before I even had time to think about it.
EIGHTEEN
I WOKE GASPING and wet with sweat. Struggling up from a dream about being strangled, I shook off the prison of tangled blankets. I sat up, wondering for a few more breaths why I was sleeping on the floor … whether I was really still in Oldcity.… No. Not Old-city. Freaktown.
I got up and stumbled out through a fog of sleep into the central room, the last place I’d seen Hanjen before I’d gone to bed. The room was gray with dawn. Hanjen was already up—sitting perfectly still in a chair, staring at nothing.
“Hanjen—?” My heart missed a beat. But he wasn’t dead; he was using his psi, searching telepathically for Miya, or Naoh. You looked like you were dead.… More than one Human had said that to me when I was using my Gift. I understood now why most Humans didn’t like to see it.
Hanjen was back, suddenly, dropping out of his trance state like my entering the room had triggered some sensory alarm.
“Any luck?” I asked, startling myself as I realized I’d spoken Standard. I came on into the room.
“‘Luck—’?” he repeated, cocking his head.
“Finding them. Did you find them?”
Comprehension came back into his face. “No … and yes. I have not located either of them yet. But I have crossed the trail of HARM. Naoh has sent the Satoh out to feed the Community’s outrage over what Tau did at the monastery. They claim that the time Naoh foresaw has come—that if our people rise up now, with one mind, together we can make the Humans disappear from our world.”
“But that’s crazy—” I broke off. He already knew that as well as I did. “What are you going to do?” I asked as he rose from his seat.
“I have contacted the Council; we are already trying together to stop this sickness from spreading.”
Just sitting there—? I remembered where I was now and didn’t ask. I wondered when I was going to stop thinking like a Human … worse, an unplugged one. “What about Miya and Joby?”
He shook his head, already looking distracted again. “This must be stopped first, or finding Joby will not matter.”
I swallowed my protest and asked, “Where’s Grandmother?”
He half frowned as he refocused. “Why?”
“Because finding Miya and Joby still matters to me, and it will still matter to you after you find Naoh. And I can’t do it without a telepath to help me.”
“I will ask her,” he said. His attention faded again. I waited, feeling my frustration climb like a fever, until finally his attention was back in the same room with me.
“She will help you. But I cannot send you to her; it would take too much of my strength, and I need that.”
“Well…” I rubbed my head. “Is she going to come here, then?”
His frown came back, as if I was confusing him for no reason. “She has never been here—”
So she couldn’t teleport to us. And it would be harder for her to walk here than for me to walk there, wherever there was.… I began to see what he was getting at. “Have you got a map?”
He nodded, looking relieved. A marker appeared in his hand, out of nowhere. He looked around the room until his eyes settled on a piece of packaging in a bin that must have been used for trash. The wrapper drifted across the room to him; he reached up and picked it out of the air. Flattening it on the bench beside him, he began to make marks on it, with long hesitations between lines. At last he looked up at me, expectant; when I didn’t move he gestured me toward him impatiently.
I went and stood beside him, realizing how difficult it must be for him to do this, when he could have simply shown it to anyone else he knew, laid it straight into their brain like a datafeed.
I thought again about how Humans had needed to find ways around their lack of the Gift. They’d had to learn how to build their own bridges across every chasm—between two or a thousand isolated minds. That was why it had taken them so much longer to get into space—where distances were so great, and the energy sources a psion could tap into to boost their power were so limited, that all bets were off and tech was the only real answer to the question. I wondered whether the fact that Humans had been forced to try harder to get there would mean that they stayed there longer.
I supposed it didn’t really matter, at least to me, since the way things were going I’d be lucky to live until tomorrow.
I wondered whether Hanjen knew enough about maps to get me across the infinitesimally small part of the planet that separated me from Grandmother. I stood beside him, watching and listening as he did his best to describe in words—clumsy, awkward, imperfect words—the route to where she was staying, and I used what senses I had left to try to understand him. “It isn’t far,” was the only thing he said that reassured me.
I took the scrap from his hand and started to turn away.
“I’m sorry I can’t do more t
o help you,” he said. “But thank you for what you are trying to do to help us … and Miya.”
I looked back at him, surprised as he made a small bow.
“If we each follow the Way we see, perhaps there is twice the chance that we will reach the end we hope for.”
I nodded.
He pointed toward the front door. I followed the hallway to the entrance and stopped. The door had no doorknob, no touchplate, no automatic eye that I could see. “Open door,” I said. There was no voice-activated microprocessor in the wall, either. “Hanjen—!” I shouted.
The door opened. I almost stepped through it; grabbed the doorframe as I realized we were on the second floor and there weren’t any steps. Looking down I could see broken masonry along the wall, where steps had probably been once. I swore and turned around. Hanjen was standing there, looking at me. As he went on watching me, invisible arms gently closed me in. They lifted me and carried me down to street level. I landed lightly on my feet, glanced up just in time to see the door close again.
I looked away down the dawn-red street There were dozens of Hydrans already out and moving. I was surprised to see the street so busy, so early in the morning. I wondered whether Hydrans always got up at dawn or whether the activity meant something I didn’t want to think about.
None of them seemed to see anything strange in the way I’d arrived at ground level. Most of them seemed to be walking, like I was, not drifting over the ground or teleporting in and out of existence. But even moving the same way they did, dressed in the same clothes they wore, I’d never feel like one of them when they tried to touch my mind. No matter how alien I felt among Humans, I realized I’d always be more Human than Hydran … always a mebtaku; and my mind’s barriers were like a raised fist, a deliberate insult to every passing stranger.
Nobody spoke to me or even directly acknowledged me as I kept walking. But word about me traveled ahead: I started to notice people waiting at the sides of the street or looking out of windows to silently watch me pass. I met their stares, letting them see my eyes, the long slit pupils, trying to keep them from seeing any fear there.
There were no signs marking any of the streets here. I held the map in a death grip; felt a little safer every time I spotted another landmark Hanjen had described. As I walked I wondered how I’d ever get up to his door again. And I wondered if there’d never been anyone here who’d been crippled in an accident or been born with a genetic flaw, disabled in either body or mind—anything that kept them from doing the kinds of things other Hydrans did. Maybe the Community had better support systems than Humans did for taking care of their own, always ready to help each other—
But I remembered Naoh’s addict lover, all the other junkies and derelicts I’d seen. They’d made themselves as helpless as I was, and no one had done anything about it. I remembered what Hanjen had said, remembered the primitive med center Miya and Naoh had shown me. Maybe no one could.
And then I wondered what it would be like to spend the rest of my life this way: walking a gauntlet of stares, not able to do things for myself that everybody else took for granted … with no one I could count on, if I didn’t find Miya. Even if I did, what was going to happen if I couldn’t make her listen—?
More and more people were out in the street now, a river of them flowing past. I wondered where they were going in such a hurry. Some of them muttered curses as they passed me or bumped me harder than they needed to. Once or twice I got shoved from behind, so hard that I stumbled. But when I spun around, nobody was close enough to have touched me. I began to wonder whether I’d even get as far as Grandmother’s.
Grandmother.… Grandmother was going to help me. I studied the map again, searching the street for landmarks. There. I spotted the place Hanjen had said I’d find the survivors from the monastery. Tree-form pillars marked its entrance, the wall facing the street was a mosaic in what must once have been brilliant pinks and golds, the colors of sunset clouds. The building face was mauve with dust and pockmarked with missing tiles now—but there couldn’t be anything else that matched the description he’d given me so closely. I started toward it, feeling the tightness in my chest ease. Almost safe—
Two figures materialized in front of me just as I reached the entrance—two Hydrans I’d never seen before, both men, bigger and heavier than most. I stopped short as they blocked my way. They stared at me; the stares weren’t friendly. I wondered if they were trying to mindspeak me. “Get away from here, Human,” one said, in Standard so thickly accented I could barely make out the words. “Go now.”
“I’m not Human,” I said, in Hydran. “I’ve come to see the oyasin.” I faced down their stares, letting them have a good look into my eyes.
They frowned back at me, then at each other. “Mixed-blood,” one of them muttered to the other, and then made a gesture at his head.
“Halfbreed,” the other said, to me. A telekinetic shove made me stagger back. “Drug addict. Mebtaku. You are not fit to approach the oyasin. Go back to the Humans where you belong.”
“She wants to see me,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control.
“I think not.” They moved closer together, still blocking my way, like they believed the only way I could get past them would be to go through them. I wondered what would happen if I actually tried it—realized I’d never even get that close, when they could make me back off without ever touching me.
“Namaste. I have been waiting for you.” Suddenly Grandmother was standing in the street beside me.
“Jeezu!” I gasped, and stumbled back again. The two Hydrans did the same thing. For once I didn’t feel embarrassed.
“Oyasin—” one of the Hydrans guarding the entrance protested. “You would come out to this deathbringer?”
I froze, thinking that somehow even this stranger knew about my past. But then I realized that it was just another way of calling me Human.
She turned to them, giving them a long look, but probably not a silent one. They bowed to her, finally, and then they bowed to me, reluctantly. They moved aside to let us pass.
I followed her in under the shadowed building entrance, through a small atrium where a handful of children were tossing a silver metal ball back and forth without ever touching it. Each time the ball hit a wall, chiming silvery music showered down on us, and the children laughed.
Beyond them was a large, high-ceilinged room. More people were gathered there: adults moving aimlessly or sleeping on mats; children curled up in someone’s lap or darting like birds through the forest of adult bodies. The air smelled of cooking. Someone was playing a musical instrument I couldn’t put a name to; there was so little audible conversation that the haunting music carried all through the room.
Here and there stray children drifted up toward the ceiling as if they were weightless. Sometimes an adult or another child went up after them or else silently ordered them back down. I thought about Joby, who couldn’t watch them drifting overhead like fragments of a dream, couldn’t even take a step without Miya’s help. I tried not to see his eyes in every small face that turned to look at me.
There were a lot of people here. I wondered whether all of them had been at the monastery or whether this was always used as a shelter. It had obviously been something else, once—the organically patterned beauty of the walls and ceiling was as detailed as it had been in the building where I’d met the Community Council. I wondered if this was part of the same complex. It wasn’t as well kept up, if it was. I could see the signs of age and neglect everywhere—too much dust, too much indifference. “What was this place?”
Grandmother glanced at me. “A—performance hall, you would say. The Community would gather here to share special dreams and creations the Way had revealed to them.”
“You mean something like art or music?” I listened to the music echoing behind us, imagining how much more interactive a concert, or any other kind of art, could be if the audience could have access to the artist’s mind and feel that creati
vity taking form. “They don’t do that anymore?”
She shook her head; her veil fluttered like a moth’s wing. “There are not enough people anymore. It became too … cold.” She didn’t mean simply the temperature. “If they want to share, they find a smaller space.”
She led me on into another room, an empty cubicle with only a mat on the floor and an oil lamp burning. Its tendril of smoke rose undisturbed. I wondered if this was where she went to meditate, or sleep … or, I hoped, search for Miya, or someone who knew where Miya was. She kneeled down on the mat, slowly and carefully. I kneeled down across from her, sensing that it was what she expected, trying to be patient and let things happen, trying not to talk too much, push too much, be too Human. I focused on the music I could still hear above the clatter and murmur of the hall outside.
Grandmother looked up from the flame to my face, down at my clothing. “Ah, Bian,” she said with a kind of sorrow, like something had become obvious to her that I’d completely missed. She didn’t say what it was.
“You don’t know where Naoh took Miya?” I asked, finally, when she didn’t say anything else.
“I know where they are,” she said, as calmly as if she was telling me the time.
“Where—?” I started to get up.
“Bian,” she said, stopping me with a single word, as abruptly as if she’d paralyzed me with psi.
I sank back onto my knees. “What?”
“You must not go to her. Bad things will happen there soon. They will happen to you, if you go there.”
I froze. “What do you mean? You had a sending? You saw it? What kind of bad things—”
She waited until my questions died away, and then she said, “Naoh and her people are spreading fear.…”
“I know—” I said and bit my lip.
“They show the Community that the Humans would rather let a child die—a Human child—than let the FTA come here to see how we live. They say the Humans have decided to destroy us all and desecrate our last sacred place—that your research team is proof of it.”