“It’s this place,” I murmured.
“How—?” he said again, demanding.
“It’s a … healing place.”
Fahd grunted. Perrymeade pushed past him to stand beside Natasa. “It’s the reefs, Burnell,” he said softly. “It has to be.… Isn’t it—?” He turned to me.
I stared at him, silent.
“Answer the man, freak—” Fahd’s fist came up again.
Natasa blocked the blow with an armored hand. “Not in front of my son,” he said, and the words were deadly. He looked at me again, and his dark eyes, so much like his son’s, doubled the urgency of Perrymeade’s pale gaze. “Please,” he said, almost humbly this time. “Tell me how this could be possible…?” He glanced down at Joby as disbelief stole his thoughts away.
“I told you,” I said thickly, sickened by the realization that he’d tell his wife, and she’d tell Tau, and ten minutes after that this wouldn’t be a shue and a healing place anymore, it would be Tau’s latest mining and research complex. They’d destroy the miracle that was here, trying to find it, profit off of it, and never even understand what they’d done.
Natasa looked back at me with the same kind of incredulous wonder, not even registering my expression. “Then he’s—cured?”
“No,” I said. “Not if you take him away now. Miya says it takes time for the neurological changes to imprint. He needs more time.”
Fahd grunted again, his disgust showing.
“Miya…” Natasa said, and his face hardened. He shook his head, starting to turn away.
“You’ll lose it all!” I said.
“Come on, Joby,” he whispered. “Let’s go home. Mommy’s waiting.” He went back through the ring of guards, carrying his son toward the hovering gunships. Joby began to struggle again. He called my name, reaching toward me over his father’s shoulder.
Fahd moved in on me, blocking my view of them before I could answer. He caught hold of my coat again. “When’s she coming back?”
“Who?” I said.
He slapped me, openhanded, keeping me on my feet with the augmented strength of his grip. “You little mindraper. When—?”
“I don’t know!” I mumbled, managing to spit in his face.
“The hell you don’t—”
I tried to twist away as I sensed the next blow coming … looked up again in confusion when it didn’t hit me.
Perrymeade had stepped between us. I looked at Fahd’s face, not sure which of us was more surprised. “Stop it,” Perrymeade said, with a quiet reasonableness that he didn’t really feel.
Fahd jerked free of Perrymeade’s grip. “You’ve got no authority here,” he said, his voice sour with resentment. But he didn’t hit me again. “If you really don’t know anything, boy, you’re already dead,” he muttered, shoving me forward through the gauntlet of armored bodies toward the waiting flyers.
(Cat—!)
I gasped as the call rattled inside my skull. It wasn’t Joby. It was Miya.
(No!) I thought. (No! Tau is here—) I didn’t know why in hell she’d come back so soon; why now—?
Someone shoved me again. My body moved like a drone across the balcony as my psi escaped through a spark-gap of spacetime to find her, and say good-bye.
(Cat.…) Whatever else she’d tried to tell me reached me as pure emotion. Our telepathic link shattered as my body banged into a hatch opening. They hauled me on board the flyer. Natasa was there already, with Joby on his knee. Joby sat with his arms wrapped around a bright-colored stuffed toy. He looked up like he sensed me before he saw me, and then his eyes glazed; I felt Miya reach through me to touch his thoughts one last time.
“Mommy—?” he cried, searching the air. Natasa caught his hands and pulled them down, half frowning. And then she was gone, and no one else was left who understood but me.
I felt her inside me again, the contact so full of anguish that it wrenched my heart out through my eyes. My concentration fell apart completely, until I couldn’t find her at all. Joby began to wail again. I felt his fright and incomprehension as the guards shoved me into a seat and locked me into it.
(Don’t cry, Joby.…) Somehow I managed to pull myself together long enough to make him believe everything was happening the way it should. (You’re going home,) I thought, finally understanding how Miya had found the strength to protect him, burying her fears for both their sakes.
Joby settled down again in Natasa’s lap, clutching the toy, but his tear-reddened eyes stayed on me. Natasa’s did too. He glared at me, at the guards around me, at Fahd and Perrymeade who’d come on board behind me. He was wondering why the hell they had to put me in the same craft with him and his son, thinking that Fahd was a bastard and Perrymeade was a fool.
He looked away again finally and began to talk to Joby in low tones, trying to reassure him. I watched his face soften as relief and wonder rose to the surface in his mind again. His son was alive, unharmed … his son was well. Just for a moment, he was afraid he might break down in front of everyone and weep. He glanced at me again, suddenly, and away.
I looked up, startled, as Perrymeade took the seat beside me. “What the hell are you doing here—?” I muttered.
“Doing my job,” he said flatly, keeping his own gaze on Joby. But in his mind he thought, Saving your lives.
Surprise caught me by the throat. I twisted in my seat. “If you’d done your job right in the first place, none of this would have happened.”
His face closed. Looking at him I saw Kissindre in his features, in his eyes, in his memories. He stood up without answering, before I could ask him about her, and moved on down the aisle to sit with his brother-in-law. I cursed my stupidity for saying that, for saying anything.
The squadron of flyers rose through a long arc up and over the reefs, heading back toward Tau Riverton. I watched Joby with his father, saw him beginning to respond to Natasa’s unguarded joy, felt him beginning to remember that this man had always been a part of his life. The other Corpses around them took off their helmets and gauntlets, one by one, to speak to the father, smile and play with the son. They weren’t even all men; a few of them were women.
Their congratulations, their concern, their pleasure, were all genuine. A buzz of disorientation filled my head as I realized that the same faceless killing machines that had cut down the Hydran demonstrators actually held thinking, feeling minds, people who were friends of this man, proud of their part in rescuing his son.
They barely glanced at me now. Locked in binders, I wasn’t a threat, and I wasn’t Human … not even human. I’d stopped existing until we reached our destination. Then they’d remember me. I wasn’t going to like it when they did. I leaned back, too aware of the bruises stiffening my jaw; trying to find the courage somewhere to help me face what was coming next.
Miya was safe. At least I knew that. And Joby would be taken care of by people who loved him. Tau hadn’t killed him after all. I didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter as long as he was safe. What we’d shared was over. I’d known it couldn’t last; I couldn’t even regret it.
I tried to focus on Joby, on the warm sea of comfort around him; tried to imagine what it would have been like to have a father who’d come searching for me and actually found me. But he hadn’t, and I couldn’t.
The clear, strong thread of psi energy linking me to Joby frayed; the signal fragmented. I pulled my focus back together, thinking my own emotions had distorted it. But as I did I realized there was something more: We were leaving the monastery behind, passing beyond the influence of whatever cast-off miracle lay in the deposits there. I remembered suddenly that it wasn’t just Joby who was going to lose everything the reefs had given back to him. So was I.
(Joby?) I turned to watch his face, searching for a sign that this wasn’t really affecting him too. (Joby—?)
He looked up as I called his name mind-to-mind; for a moment the look on his face was vacant and confused. I felt static break up his thoughts as he tried to a
nswer me; saw his body twitch spasmodically in his father’s lap.
His father glanced down at him. I felt Natasa’s adrenaline surge of panic, the numbing rush of denial as he tried to ignore what was happening, as if to have even a moment’s doubt about his son’s condition might change everything back to the way it had been. The way I’d warned him it would be.…
I felt Natasa look up at me again. The unspoken demand in his eyes speared my brain. I closed the fist of my thoughts and shut him out.
Joby flung out his hands with a wail of complaint, reaching toward me. “Cat—” He called my name, and it was still intelligible.
I dropped my defenses, feeling his fear as he sensed something going wrong inside us both: He was losing something precious, something he didn’t even know the name of, something he hadn’t missed until we’d given it to him. Something that even he knew was his birthright.…
And I knew exactly what he was feeling. I jerked against the seat restraints, but with my hands locked behind me there was nothing I could do to reach him. I sat back again and focused what mental control I had left, forcing everyone and everything else out of my thoughts so that I could protect him in the only way left to me, for as long as I could.
Joby settled into his father’s arms again, quiet now, even speaking a word or two when his father asked him something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Perrymeade watching me, almost like he’d realized what I was doing. His face furrowed; I couldn’t spare the concentration to find out why. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t call some Corpse to slap a drugderm on me and shut my psi down for good.
I took a deep breath, concentrating on my link to Joby, on being there for him, keeping both of us calm as the strands of light strung across the darkness between the outposts of our thoughts shorted out one by one. No ability I had could reinforce the patterning of his neural circuitry to let him go on functioning without massive external support. Nothing I could do would convince my telepathy not to falter as the distance from the monastery grew, as the time until we reached Tau Riverton shortened.
At last the perfect grid of Riverton showed below us, expanding geometrically as we dropped toward our final destination: Corporate Security headquarters.
Joby had been resting quietly against his father’s side, not moving or making any sound, but still aware and functioning. He made a small squawk as my eyes registered the building and I fed the unexpected shock of recognition to him.
I looked away from the window, using all my physical senses to help me stay fixed on him, needing all my self-control to keep my fear from destroying the last fragile filament between us. The flyer landed inside CorpSec’s compound. Natasa got up from his seat, setting Joby down on unsteady legs, supporting him with gentle hands.
Someone’s hand closed hard over my shoulder. “He’s already sweating. Lieutenant,” the Corpse said, releasing the seat restraints and hauling me to my feet.
Fahd stopped in front of me and murmured, “You’ll be sweating blood soon, freak.”
Joby made a mewling, helpless noise behind me. I turned back in time to see him fall out of his father’s grasp as Fahd destroyed the last of my control, and all his control went with it.
Natasa kneeled down to pick up the small, twitching body of his son. He hugged Joby against his own armored body. “Joby!” he said. “Joby?” He looked up at me again, his look demanding answers I couldn’t give to questions he wouldn’t ask me.
(Joby—!) I shouted, into a silence that held no light at all: no trace of his failing nerve net, no trace of any thought—no proof that everyone around me hadn’t suddenly ceased to exist. Even Fahd, alien-eyed and smirking in front of me, felt as dead as the ashes of my burned-out psi.
But as I looked back at him I realized that I was the dead man, not him. He grinned, like he thought he was entirely responsible for the look on my face then. He forced me around and out of the craft at gunpoint, not letting me look back. I heard Natasa’s voice rising with urgency as he tried to make his son respond. I heard the murmured concern of other voices, voices that had been full of wonder like his own when we left the monastery.
Perrymeade was beside me suddenly. Catching my attention across a barrier of helmets, he called, “Joby—what’s happening to him? What did you do—?”
“I didn’t do anything to him!” I said fiercely. “I told Natasa—Miya tried to tell you—it’s the place! The monastery. I warned him.”
Perrymeade dropped back out of my line of sight, probably reporting what I’d said to Natasa. I caught sight of their small group heading away diagonally across the field. Natasa was carrying Joby, but he moved like a man who’d been knifed in the gut. I thought I saw someone waiting at the edge of the field—figured it would be Joby’s mother, and whoever she’d brought along for support. They were being held back by another squad of guards.
I looked over my shoulder for a last glimpse of Joby. I saw Natasa pass him into his mother’s arms, saw grief and joy mingle into one impossible emotion, before their closing bodies blocked my line of sight. I caught the sound of voices on the wind, but I couldn’t make out any words. There was no sound from Joby; nothing at all in the silence of my empty mind.
Perrymeade was still looking toward me as the guards herded me away into the detention center and the doors sealed behind us. I tried once more to get a grip on my psi, but it was too late; everything I’d been had come undone. My mind was as empty as deep space, drawing a blank on everyone we’d left behind, everyone we passed. The Corpses moving through the station’s bleak, inescapable halls might as well have been real corpses. I needed peace, time, to find out whether the monastery had made any lasting difference in my control. But my time was up.
Borosage was waiting for me in the windowless interrogation room. I flinched, but I wasn’t surprised. He had the same prod in his hand and the same smile on his face. “Well, freak,” he said, “here we are again. Let’s just take up where we left off—” He bent his head at the hard chair with the straps that I’d come to in, the first time I’d opened my eyes in this place. “We won’t be interrupted this time, since you went so far out of your way to prove I was right about you. I ought to thank you.”
“You brain-dead bag of pus,” I said in Hydran.
“Speak Standard, dammit, you little shit!”
“Eat me, Corpse.” I said in Standard.
His face mottled. He flicked the prod on.
I lunged forward and knocked him down with a head butt. I almost fell on top of him; barely caught my balance in time to run.
But the guards were on me before I got three steps, dragging me back and around as Borosage staggered to his feet. He picked up the prod, breathing hard. Fahd had his fingers knotted in my hair, an arm across my neck, half choking me. Borosage ripped open my clothes, and drove the prod’s tip against my naked chest until I screamed.
Fahd let me go, letting my head fall forward so that I could breathe. I sucked in long, hoarse gasps of air; pain-tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I raised my head, finally, as the smell of burned flesh faded and my nausea eased. Arms locked around me, holding me immobile as Borosage raised the prod again. I shut my eyes, a flood of curses in Hydran and Standard spilling out of my mouth. I let them come, not able to stop them.
But the blistering shock of pain didn’t happen.…
I opened my eyes finally, my body still trembling, my jaw clenched with aching anticipation. Borosage stood just beyond reach, the prod held rigidly at his side. Somehow Perrymeade had come to be standing in the space between us. Both of them were looking at me with expressions I didn’t have a clue about.
Perrymeade glanced down; not away from the fury in my eyes, but down at something in his hand: Luc Wauno’s medicine pouch. I must have dropped it, struggling to get away.
“K-Kissindre—?” I managed, finally. “Wauno?”
“Still hospitalized,” he said.
Relief burned my face: Alive. At least they were alive.… But as I lo
oked up at him again, I understood perfectly what was in his eyes.
“She barely survived the crash. If the rescue team had been any longer getting to them.…”
I bowed my head, more tears running down my face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.…”
“I told you what he was,” Borosage said, oozing satisfaction. “Is that why HARM recruited you, freak? To make their kill for them? To murder innocent Humans for those poor persecuted aliens who were too helpless to do it themselves—?”
I bit my lip, feeling the pain in my chest double. I couldn’t make myself face Perrymeade again even for long enough to tell him why the words were lies, tell him how wrong they were, how out of control everything had gotten.… I looked down at the brand Borosage had laid on me: the blistered, weeping hole in my chest. It looked like someone had tried to rip my heart out. I felt armored hands trap me as my knees got weak.
“Corporate Security did an admirable job of rescuing my nephew,” Perrymeade said to Borosage. “It seems you knew the best way to deal with these terrorists all along. I owe you an apology for ever questioning your methods.”
Borosage showed his teeth in what passed for a smile. He flicked the prod at my eye, making me cringe; his eyes measured Perrymeade’s reaction. “I’m glad you’ve come to feel that way.”
Perrymeade’s face stayed expressionless, professionally noncommittal, even while he stole another look at the burn on my chest. “You were the right one—the only one—Tau could have chosen to handle this situation,” he murmured. His gaze shifted away again.
“Deathbringer,” I said in Hydran.
Perrymeade glared at me. I didn’t know whether it was my tone of voice he was reacting to or the fact that he didn’t know what I’d said. He looked away from me with an effort. “What are you going to do with him, now that you have him?”
Borosage shrugged. “He’s guilty as hell of terrorism, kidnapping, half a dozen crimes against the corporate state. And besides that, he somehow got an illegal message off-world—”
“What message?” Perrymeade demanded, his voice rising. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”