Because sometimes in the heat of lovemaking she had cried out, not with pleasure but with pain—my pain, as my pleasure slipped across some unwatched border into the night country, and a nameless stranger’s perversion tore her unprotected heart like shrapnel.
And as the days passed—as their inevitable end grew closer, and so did we—I began to wake from the dreaming safety of our sleep at night thinking I was in another place and time, sweating the blood of nightmares. Waking up in her arms, I’d find her comforting me like a child; I’d see the incomprehension in her eyes as I drifted back down into sleep without explanation.
Until one night I woke, sitting bolt upright in the faint moonlight, and realized Miya had wakened me. She lay beside me, with silent sobs wracking her body, her fists in a death grip on the blankets she’d pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound.
(Miya…?) I could barely feel her in my mind, like she was trying to muffle her thoughts the same way. But I found the images of Joby, of me, of herself, distorted with pain.… All of us dead—worse, all of us alive but alone, in the hands of the Humans.… I pulled her into my arms, finally understanding that all the while I’d struggled to keep her free of my prison of fear, she was locked in the next cell.
It took all my strength to turn the key that waited—that had always waited—in the lock of the final door. I opened myself to her.
Raw emotion arced across the space between us to complete the joining—love*death*loss—like none of those emotions had ever existed separately inside her, even in dreams.
The feedback smashed through my unguarded mind like a shock wave, fragmenting me, her, everything but the unbreakable bond between us, and the last recognizable thought I had was that neither of us would ever take a sane breath again.…
A sound—a child’s wail of terror—reached me. A single coherent emotion—Miya’s—took form around it. I felt her respond, recapturing the spilled blood of her thoughts as her mind struggled to answer Joby’s cry.
I barely refocused my own thoughts in time to catch her trailing lifeline. We rose through fathoms of memory, reclaiming our souls and our wills, breaching the surface of sanity at last.
I fell forward onto the tangled bedding as I came back into my other five senses; Miya rolled away from me toward Joby. Joby lay in a fetal knot beside her, making the high keening cry I’d heard him make the first time I saw him, but with a serrated edge of pain I’d never heard before. Miya held him in her arms, surrounding him with her touch, her contact flowing into his mind like life-giving oxygen to wake its higher centers, its voluntary controls.
I watched her comfort him, reorient him, bring him back into the world just as his cry had brought her back. Without him, without the bond between the two of them, the two of us might have stayed locked in a psychotic klin until our bodies wasted away and died. I wiped my hand across my mouth, trembling.
At last Joby had grown quiet enough that she could settle him down to sleep again beside her. She covered him with blankets, covered his face with apologetic kisses as he drifted off, smiling.
Her tears began to fall again, in silence, welling from her eyes like springwater. She didn’t turn back to look at me.
I sat in the moon-shadowed darkness watching her, watching Joby, while my heartbeat gradually slowed. I kept my mind clenched shut, afraid to touch either of them: afraid of the past, afraid of the future, afraid of causing them more pain. Afraid.…
She looked up at me then, finally, and even though she was still weeping her eyes were fearless; the hand she held out to me was as steady as faith.
My body shrank back in a mindless reflex. I shook my head, not meeting her gaze as I pulled on my clothes. I got up from the bed and left the room.
I moved through the monastery’s halls without a light, wishing that I could lose myself in the maze of passageways, stumble into some other dimension and disappear.
I glanced up as I passed through a chamber I’d crossed nearly every day without seeing anything new. But this time the moonlight threw a wall into unexpected relief, revealing an opening I’d never seen, in what I’d taken to be a featureless surface.
I changed trajectory, snaked a path between pillars to the hidden doorway. The corridor beyond was no more than five meters long. At the end of it I found a prayer platform like the ones I’d seen in Freaktown, except that this one was open to the sky, within the energy field that protected the entire monastery from the weather. But this one was hidden, special … linpoche.
I stood on the platform looking out into the night. Above me were the stars, the night’s blackness, the face of the moon scumbled with elusive shapes. The images I saw there seemed to change from one moment to the next, transforming my perceptions again and again, until at last even my mood began to transform.
I leaned on the edge of the low wall that ringed the platform, searching my pockets for the mouth harp I’d somehow managed to hold on to through everything that had happened to me. I put it to my lips and breathed into it, hearing the smoky, plangent notes that it hadn’t made in too long. But always the same ones; always the same ones missing, so that any song I tried to play was incomplete.
I lowered it again, disappointed, like the inarticulate part of my brain that belonged to music and moods had expected even my attempt to play a song would be transformed.
(You have to become a part of it.) Miya’s voice filled my mind as she appeared on the platform beside me. I felt her begin to say something more and then stop, falling silent with awe as she realized where we were. (Linpoche—) she thought. She looked back at me, the night reflected in her eyes. I saw her mouth quiver.
She looked away again at the face of the moon, and for a long moment her emotions were closed to me. At last she thought, carefully, (With any instrument, to make music is … to be namaste.)
I shook my head, looking down at the harp. (But it doesn’t have everything I need to play my music.) I held it out, keeping my own thoughts perfectly transparent on the opaque surface of my mind.
(Then make them yourself,) she said. Something appeared in her hand: one of the flutes used to greet the an lirr. She ran through its scale of notes. There were gaps in the liquid progression of sound, but when she began a song the missing notes were somehow all there.
(How?) I thought. (Your Gift—?)
She shook her head. She played the song more slowly, letting me see how she used her fingers to partially block an opening, hear how she modulated her breath to alter pitch—making what was there work for her, to give her what she needed.
I raised the mouth harp to my lips and blew into it. I cupped my hands, changing its sound by the way I shifted my fingers, hearing notes slide past that I’d never produced before. I lowered it again, slowly, as my throat closed so that I couldn’t go on playing. I studied the cool gleam of its moonlit metal surface resting in my hand. At last I put it back into my coat pocket and looked up as something drew my thoughts, my eyes, like a lodestone …
(Miya.…)
She kissed me, her fingers digging into my back, pressing herself against me as if she could dissolve into my body and make us one physically—doubling our strength, so that nothing could hurt us, or come between us, ever again.
But even as we went on kissing, wedding our hearts and minds while our union was witnessed by the countless stars in the infinite night. I knew we didn’t have a prayer.
Because I knew how the universe worked, and nobody got out alive.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING Miya set out for Freaktown again. She held Joby’s small, groggy form in her arms, kissing him gently on the forehead before she kissed me long and deep on the mouth. I wished then that I wasn’t a half-breed, with only half-Hydran looks and half a Hydran’s psi … wished that I could take her place, not because I could have done it better, but only so that I wouldn’t have to be the one who stayed behind, waiting, never knowing.…
She disappeared with a last half smile of regret, while I stayed behi
nd holding Joby in my arms. I felt his body stiffen uncertainly as he suddenly lost sight and sense of her.
“Where’s Mommy?” he asked like he always did, speaking Standard like he always did with me.
“She went to get food,” I answered like I always did. “She’ll be back.”
“Soon?”
“Yeah, soon,” I murmured, carrying him on my hip as I crossed the room to the window. We looked out together at the sun rising over the reefs. “Look at that,” I said, pointing, to distract him. “One more day.” A taku fluttered down from above and landed on my head. “Hey!” I said, but it didn’t move. Joby giggled, pressing his hands to his mouth.
I managed a laugh of my own, amazed that even now, staring into the light of universal order while death and chaos hung from a thread above us, life could still be so absurd that there was nothing left to do but laugh about it.
“Are you my daddy?” Joby asked, his face turning somber again.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing away.
“I have two daddies?”
My breath caught. I nodded slowly. “That’s right,” I whispered. “You’re a lucky boy.”
“And two mommies?”
I nodded again, not trusting myself to answer. I hadn’t let myself think about his real parents since I’d crossed the river. The taku launched into the air, startled by my sudden movement.
“Do they all love me?”
I swallowed. “You bet they … we all do.”
(Why aren’t they here?)
I knew exactly which set of parents he meant this time. “I … they can’t be.” I answered out loud, because right then I was even more uncertain about whether I could control my thoughts. “They want to be here, but they can’t be.”
“Why?”
“They … have work to do for Tau.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
My mouth quirked. Not anymore. “My work now … Miya’s and mine, is making you strong and well. That’s why we’re here, at this healing place. When everything’s better, then you’ll go back to your … other family.” I wished suddenly that they could be here, to see how he was now. Whether he lived or died, they’d probably never see him this way again.
His face brightened, then turned rubbery, like his thoughts had snagged in my fraying confidence.
“I promise,” I said, wanting it to be true so much that I even believed it.
He nodded, relaxing in my arms. He put his head on my shoulder, content to wait with me while the sun rose over the reefs. I looked down at the valley below us, at the bridge that spanned it, so different from the bridge that joined Freaktown and Riverton.
I thought about the difference in the way Hydrans and Humans counted the value of the reefs, how much of that difference came from the way they perceived them. To Humans a reef was nothing but a biochemical stockpile, no more or less than the sum of its parts. The fact that this last reef, and this healing place, had escaped being strip-mined was nothing short of a miracle. It had only happened because Tau’s shortsightedness and xenophobia kept them from learning anything meaningful about Hydran culture.
I thought about miracles, about what this shue had given back to Joby, to me; how it had freed us all from our lives of solitary confinement. I wondered how long it had been since the Hydrans of Refuge had felt whole, connected, greater than the sum of their parts … wondered again what would happen if the an lirr returned to the Homeland: Whether the rain they brought with them could bring this wasteland back to life. Whether their presence would be enough to bring the Community back to life, back to the Way. Whether it was ever too late to start moving toward the kind of future their past deserved.…
Joby shielded his eyes against the glare as the sun rose higher, his stubby fingers curled into an imitation of Wauno’s field lenses. I’d let him look through them, to search for the an lirr, sometimes when he was bored. We never saw any, but he never seemed to mind.
“Look,” he said suddenly, and pointed into the sunrise.
“What?” I squinted a little, trying to make out anything separate from the reef and sky. My pupils had already narrowed to slits; usually they did a better job than Human eyes of keeping the light out as well as letting it in.
“There.” He pointed impatiently, wagging his hand until I began to make out a half a dozen black specks like sunspots against the dawn. They grew as I watched, expanding at a rate that made a tumor of dread form inside me. Coming this way, directly at us, too big and too fast to be anything natural. There was only one other thing they could be: CorpSec flyers. And without Miya here, there was no way to escape from them.
“See, Cat?” Joby was demanding as my higher brain functions came back on line. “See? See?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “I see them.” I held him closer as the ships began to take on shape and detail, not slowing their approach. Their flashers hurt my eyes, brighter than the sun.
“Daddy!” Joby called out, waving in sudden delight. He wasn’t looking at me. I remembered suddenly that his father was CorpSec; the Tau Security logos were plain enough to read now on the approaching flyers. “Time to go home?” he asked, looking at me. “Everything’s better now?”
Only it wasn’t his father coming to get him. It was Borosage’s butchers. I stood paralyzed, waiting for the lead gunship to open fire. We’d never even feel it, it would happen too fast—the plasma burst that blew us apart and scattered our atoms into a billion golden dustmotes. “Yes, time to go…” I whispered. “Hold on tight.”
I shut my eyes, afraid to watch death approaching; opened them again, afraid not to.
No burst of raw energy suddenly put out the sky. I went on staring, frozen where I stood, as the gunships stopped in midair. They ringed the balcony where we waited, weaponless and unprotected.
“This is Corporate Security!” a voice boomed out of nowhere, everywhere, like maybe we’d been deafened as well as blinded. “Stand where you are. Put up your hands.”
Slowly I let Joby slide out of my arms. Then, slowly, I put my hands in the air.
Corpses in body armor emerged like beetles from the closest ship, dropping onto the balcony around us. Every weapon was trained on me. I stood motionless, barely even breathing, afraid that any move I made would be my last.
Joby clung to my leg as he saw the weapons and registered the moods in the minds behind them. “Daddy—?” he called, his eyes searching one shielded, anonymous face after another.
I tried to touch his thoughts, reassure him somehow. My mind seemed to be as paralyzed as my body. I tried to find words instead—broke off as one of the armored men still disembarking pushed forward through the ring of troopers, dropping his weapon, lifting the face shield of his helmet.
“Joby—!” It was Burnell Natasa. I watched in disbelief as he swung Joby up in his arms, backing away again through the ring of weapons still aimed at me. Another faceless, anonymous Corpse came forward then, searched me for the weapons I wasn’t carrying, jerked my arms behind me, and clamped binders on my wrists. When he was through a third one took his place: Fahd, Borosage’s chief goon.
As he cleared his faceplate I saw the shadows of a half-healed cosmo job still marring his face. I remembered suddenly what Miya had done to his weapon the last time he’d seen us … what the exploding plasma rifle had done to his eyes. I looked at his eyes now.
His new eyes were a different color. They were green. And the pupils weren’t round; they were slitted. He’d needed a transplant … but he hadn’t needed that. I realized as he met my stare that he’d done it so that every time he looked in a mirror he’d remember how much he hated us.…
“Where’s the girl?” he said. He wasn’t carrying a gun this time. His armored fists were clenched at his sides.
“Wha’—?” I said blankly; realized he meant Miya … realized they’d gassed us without my even knowing it. I took a deep breath. “Gone.”
His mailed fist hit me before I could duck out of the way, and sent
me sprawling. “Don’t lie to me, freak.”
I sat up, slowly and awkwardly, my head ringing with the blow, my ears filled with the sound of Joby screaming my name. Fahd stood over me, blocking the light. My blood was a wet smear on his gloved fist. “No’… lying,” I mumbled.
“He isn’t lying, Lieutenant,” someone called out. “All scans show the rest of the building’s empty.”
Fahd leaned down and hauled me to my feet. “So the HARM bitch ran out on you when she saw us coming.” He smirked.
Fuck you— I barely swallowed the words in time. “She lef’ b’fore you came,” I said. “To get food.” He laughed. I swore under my breath, hating myself for saying that much.
“She has to be here. Look at my son!”
I recognized Natasa’s voice. I craned my neck past Fahd to catch a glimpse of Joby, remembering that Natasa had never seen Joby this way before—as a normal, functioning child, without Miya’s help or guidance.
“She’s not here, Burnell,” someone said; the voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Bodies shifted in the background, until finally I could put a face to the voice. It was Perrymeade.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but—” He moved closer to Natasa, took Joby’s straining hand in his as Joby reached out to me and called my name again.
Natasa came to stand in front of me. His grip on Joby tightened as Joby tried to squirm free. Joby began to cry.
(It’s all right, Joby,) I thought, beginning to get enough control back to use my telepathy. But I couldn’t keep him from seeing the blood running down my face. (I can’t hold you right now—) I twisted my pinioned hands behind me. (Stay with your father. You’ll be safe.)
Joby stopped struggling. He relaxed against the hard shell of his father’s body armor, wiping his nose on his sleeve, but he was still looking at me. Natasa looked at me too, meeting my eyes for the first time. “How?” he asked.