I pulled a lot of extra shifts to keep up with the work schedules. But I didn’t mind working extra shifts: it was more time spent in the womb of the cloud-whales’ thoughts, the world I’d shared with Miya, the world that only Hydrans could really experience.… It was less time I had to spend with Humans, who saw the reefs as component parts, nothing more—chemical byproducts to be broken down and used. They felt no sense of awe, no alien presence—the true nature of the reefs was as intangible to them as they were becoming to me. I spent all of every day with the reef whispering inside my head, but when I stepped out again into the real world filled with Human faces and Human minds, my mind went stone dead and the filaments of my psi shriveled up like something blighted by frost.
I ate because I had to and slept because I had to; beyond that the world outside the reef slowly disappeared. I lay in my bunk, haunted by the images I’d carried back from the day’s work, letting them bleed into sweet memories of Miya—memories I didn’t let myself touch when I was sounding the reefs, where concentration was everything. Dreamfall filled my head with an alien sea that drowned the presence of Human voices.
The others stepped aside when I moved past them, looking at me like they were the ones who saw a ghost. I only spoke when I had to, and that wasn’t often, because they didn’t have anything that I needed anymore. Everything I needed I found inside the reef.
* * *
Until the day when I was working Blue Team’s reef-face. Moving through the changing densities and fragile interfaces more easily than I’d ever navigated in cyberspace, I suddenly found a death trap. A thing that tasted like acid, smelled like poison, felt like stepping on my own grave …
“Canary! Come out now.” The distorted, disembodied voice of Ixpa, the tech I worked with, burst on my ears before I could even report the anomaly.
I touched the speaker plate inside my helmet with my chin. “What—?” I said thickly, wondering if I was hearing things.
“Out,” she repeated.
“No. Found something. It’s big, it stinks. Got to go deeper—”
“Out, now, bondie!” someone said. Someone else: Ixpa never called me anything but “Canary,” after Feng assigned me to her. Her little death bird, she’d said when I’d asked, and grinned like that was supposed to be funny.
I swore as a sudden power surge through my suit sent pain jagging up my spine. It was the first punishing shock I’d gotten since the day I’d put a suit on. “Shit! Ixpa—” I shouted.
Another shock answered me, strong enough to make my teeth hurt. I swore again and let her reel me in.
I stumbled out of the reef-face into the blinding emptiness of the complex, blinking. “Dammit,” I mumbled, searching for Ixpa’s face, her uniform, in the group of what looked like officials waiting outside. “Why—?” I broke off.
It wasn’t Ixpa standing there in a tech’s datapatches; it was somebody I’d never seen before. And standing beside him was Protz, looking frantic. I’d never imagined his face could look that animated. He was flanked by guards, and Natasa wasn’t in sight. “Get the suit off,” Protz said.
“What?” I shook my head.
“Now,” he said. The guards raised their weapons.
“Where’s Ixpa?” I asked the tech. “I found a volatile—”
“Shut up and take off the suit,” the tech said.
I shut up and took off the suit.
“Carefully, dammit!” Protz snapped. “Those cost a fortune.” I put the suit in its container, carefully.
Protz gestured, and one of the guards took hold of me.
“What’s happening?” I said, but they didn’t answer. “What is it?” I shouted at the tech, feeling my sense of reality slip further as they pulled me away. He only shrugged, watching me go.
Protz and the guards forced me to take a tram ride that ended in a hike through more corridors in what looked like a storage annex. At last we stopped in front of a closed, windowless door. Whatever was behind it was listed in a coded display I couldn’t read.
Protz kept looking over his shoulder. One of the guards put a hand on the door lock; the door slid open. I stared into total darkness; before I could react, someone shoved me through. I turned around just in time to see Protz point a stungun at me. He fired.
And then everything went black.
* * *
Everything stayed that way for a long time. When I came to, the room was still totally dark. Panic caught in my chest as I realized I didn’t even know if I was still where they’d left me. Crawling, groping, I found what felt like the door. My hands were still numb and heavy with stunshock, like my brain.
I pulled myself up and beat my fists against the panel. The sound echoed back at me. When it faded the silence was total again, like the darkness. Not even a crack of light outlined the door frame. No sound reached me from the other side. Probably no sound I made reached beyond these walls, either.
I felt my way around the edge of the door, searching for a touchplate that might let me out, or at least give me some light. The walls near the door frame were seamless ceralloy, slick and cold, like ice. There was no touchplate, no motion sensor.
“Lights on—?” I said finally, not expecting any better luck trying the obvious.
Light flared around me. I was inside a space about ten meters by twenty, full of storage lockers and equipment I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure if I felt more relieved or stupid. The unheated air made me shiver, but at least it was fresh. They hadn’t left me here to suffocate, then, and probably not to freeze to death. I leaned against the cold wall, trying to imagine what the point of this was.
Why would Protz come here? Had someone heard Natasa hadn’t killed me after all, and sent Protz to take care of it? But Protz—? That didn’t make any sense. Protz was a career asskisser. I could hardly believe he’d had the guts to stun-shoot me.
“Oh, fuck—” My hands knotted as I suddenly realized what would make sense: Protz had come here with the FTA special investigators. Natasa had said they weren’t coming back here. But these weren’t just any Feds. What if they’d been smart enough to change their itinerary without warning? Protz would have to bring them here … and Protz would have to shut me up, make sure I couldn’t get to anyone and they couldn’t get to me.
I sat down on the floor, hugging my knees, holding my body together. My nerve endings still felt like stir-fry. I had no sense of how much time had passed. For all I knew, the Feds had been here and gone already. The Natasas must have kept their mouths shut, too afraid for Joby’s safety to risk losing Tau’s support. I wouldn’t be trapped here without the cooperation of Natasa’s guards.
A deep shudder ran through the floor I was sitting on. Around me, the heavy machinery began to rattle and sing. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out; something big crashed to the floor about two meters away. I struggled to my feet, shouting for help. My voice rang back at me from half a hundred surfaces as I flattened myself against the wall in the utter blackness.
The lights came back on—stayed on, dimmer than before. “What the hell is going on!” I shouted. Only echoes answered me. There were no more tremors, no more things falling—no sound beyond my own ragged breathing.
I swore softly, keeping myself company as I paced off the narrow space between the sealed door and the piece of equipment that had crashed down into the middle of the storeroom, blocking it off. An explosion. It would take an explosion—a big one—to explain everything I’d just experienced.
I wondered, with a sudden, sick prescience, if it was the anomaly I’d found in the reef-face just before Protz forced me out … what that meant for everybody involved, and especially what it would mean for me. And then I wondered how long it would take before somebody remembered that I was locked up in here.
I slid down the wall again and began the wait.
* * *
It probably wasn’t as long as it seemed like before somebody opened the door. I was on my feet at the first trace of sound, blinkin
g the sudden glare out of my eyes.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t Burnell Natasa, alone, his hands empty, his face and uniform smeared with something indescribable.
He swore as he saw me, but I only saw relief in his eyes. “Come on,” he snapped, nodding his head at the hall behind him. “I need you.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, automatically dropping my gaze.
He gave me a surprised look, as if he’d been expecting me to react like a Human being. Like he’d forgotten where I’d been since the last time he saw me. “Please,” he said, awkwardly. “Cat.”
I followed him out of the storeroom and down the hall. “What is it?” I asked. “What happened?”
“There was an explosion.” He kept walking, looking as grim as death now.
“In Reef Sector 3F. Blue Team was working the face—they hit a volatile pocket. A big one.”
He stopped short and turned to stare at me. “How did you know that—?”
“I found it just before Protz put me away. The Feds are here, aren’t they?”
He began to walk again, faster. I had to push myself to keep up. “The Feds were right there when it blew,” he said. “So was my wife.”
“God,” I breathed. “Are they—”
“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “No one knows. The work area is inaccessible. Whatever happened sent some kind of massive feedback through our power grid. All our basic life support is running on emergency generators. But the whole fucking infrastructure is fried. All our equipment is off-line: everything’s got to be reprogrammed before any readings we take will mean anything. We can’t locate any survivors until we get our systems up again. God knows how long that will take. That’s why I need you.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
He caught hold of me, jerking me around. “Because you’re a—” Freak. He ate the word, grimacing. “A telepath. A psion. You know why, dammit! You can find her … them—” He broke off again. “I want you to save my wife.”
“I can’t … I can’t do that anymore.” My own voice fell apart as I saw the desperation in his eyes. “There’s nothing left inside me. You need a real psion. You need Miya—”
“I don’t have Miya! You don’t! You were at that monastery too. Janos told me it affected you: you were still helping Joby on the flight back. There’s something left of it in Joby; there’s got to be something left in you!” He shook me, like he could shake my psi loose. “My wife saw it—the way you could read the reefs.”
“That’s different. I—”
“She trusted you—God knows why, after all the grief you’ve caused us. She made me trust you. Now you can pay her back, freak, or you can die trying—” Suddenly his gun was in his hand, pointing at me. His hand shook.
I looked at the gun. I looked back at him. I stood, silent and unmoving, until finally the hand holding the stungun dropped, and his gaze with it. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. He looked at the gun like he didn’t know what the hell he’d been doing, like a man who’d been hit too many times in a fight. He put the gun away.
I rubbed my face. “I’ll try,” I murmured. “That’s all I meant. I’ll do anything I can. I just don’t know if I can do anything.” I looked up at him. “If somebody hadn’t put a gun to my head once before, I might still be a telepath.” I started on, and this time he followed me.
We reached the tram stop, and a tram was waiting there to take us back through the complex. He didn’t say anything during the ride. He never asked me how I’d ended up where he found me. He probably knew exactly how I’d gotten there. I couldn’t imagine how knowing that must make him feel.
I let him take the lead again until we arrived at the site where I’d been working … what was left of it. An entire section of the reinforced corridor leading to the face they’d been excavating had collapsed. Crews were already working to clear away the debris, but I could tell from the curses and arguing that whatever had crashed the programming of the entire installation must have lobotomized their equipment all down the line.
“Protz…” I breathed. He was standing in the open space beyond the dust-fogged sea of Tau workers, talking to some officials, gesturing at the smoking wall of debris. I pushed my way toward him. “Protz!” I shouted, saw him look up, saw the look on his face as he recognized me.
Someone caught my arm just before I reached him, hauling me around: Feng, my old crew boss. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “Where the hell have you been?”
I stared at him. “Locked in a closet.”
“What?” His face hardened. “You were supposed to be in there. You were supposed to keep this from happening, for God’s sake!”
“Ask him.” I jerked loose from Feng’s grip, pointing at Protz. The vips around Protz looked up. “Ask him!” I shouted.
Natasa caught up to me again, waved Feng off as the vips started toward us. Protz stayed where he was. I saw him wipe his face as he watched them cross the room.
“What’s this about?” It was Sandusky, the installation’s Chief of Ops. I remembered him from the tour I’d taken with the first group of Feds. He looked at Natasa, and then at Feng, before he looked at me without a twitch of recognition. “Why weren’t you at your duty station?”
I opened my mouth—froze, as I tried to think of how to make them believe me, or even a way to explain it.
“Protz ordered him taken away from his work, just as he found the anomaly—” Natasa broke in, like he’d realized the same thing. “Suarez and Timebu will verify that they were told to take him away and isolate him where the Feds wouldn’t find him.”
“Why?” some other vip asked incredulously.
Natasa took a deep breath. “You’d have to ask Protz about that, sir.” He glanced at me, his mouth a tight line, his eyes telling me to keep on keeping my own mouth shut.
I watched them turn away, like they really intended to do just that; saw panic begin to show on Protz’s face.
“All right,” Natasa said to me. “What do you need to do this?”
To use my psi. It took me a minute just to realize what he meant. I looked out across the sea of noise and chaos, seeing nothing but Humans, no different from their useless machines when I tried to see them with my mind’s eye.
I forced myself to look at them with clearer eyes than I had anytime since I’d come to this place, shell-shocked with loss, and begun to lose myself in the reefs. I watched them struggling, arguing, trying desperately to rescue friends and strangers who might not even be alive. And then I tried to close them out of my mind, so I could do what I had to do to help them: reach into the void, move through the trackless darkness, and find a distant star of consciousness … touch another Human mind.
And then I finally understood why my Gift had been stone dead ever since I’d come here, even though it had been easy for Miya to reach into my mind and into my heart. It was nothing as simple as guilt or fear that kept me from using my psi … it was them. The Humans, the Others—the deadheads who’d abandoned me, sold me out, given me up, and let me down, fucked me over again and again. The few of them I’d known who’d ever been decent or kind to me, decent or kind at all … their humanity had only made them easy victims too.
The Hydran in me would always need to feel alive, connected, so desperate for it that there’d always be a part of me that would give anything, suffer anything, to have my Gift back again.
But Miya had been right when she’d said the Human in me could never really trust another Human being, not even the Human part of me—the thing that had forced me to go on living when I had no right to, or any reason.…
I looked up and Natasa was speaking again, probably telling me to answer his question.
“I can’t,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Not here. Not like this.”
“Then where?” he said impatiently. “What do you need?”
For everything to have been different. I looked at him, through him, with my mind as empty as a
dead man’s. “A phase suit,” I said finally. “I have to go into the reef.”
“The equipment’s scrambled—” he said, his patience slipping another notch.
“You mean even the suits don’t work?”
He shook his head. “They should be functional—but there’s no way you can interface with the techs; no way they can get a reading off you. There’d be no one to guide you or pull you out of trouble.”
“I don’t need a tech. I need—” I looked toward the ruins of Human technology and alien dreamfall joined like lovers in a suicide pact. “That. I need to be inside.” Need to be somewhere I want to be.
He looked at me, his face caught between expressions, like suddenly he wasn’t sure if I was just a freak or actually insane. “All right,” he said finally, like he’d decided it didn’t matter either way. “I’ll get you one. Stay here.” He held his hands up, as if he was putting a spell on me so that I didn’t disappear.
I waited, watching the vips surround Protz again, not able to hear what they were saying, not able to read their minds. I didn’t know where keiretsu had the strongest hold here: Would the installation’s officials turn on Protz because he’d caused this disaster, or would they try to bury their mistakes? I hoped Natasa got back before they made up their minds.
Natasa returned with a phase suit, as good as his word. He looked relieved to see me still waiting there, as good as mine. I put the suit on. He went with me as far as the wall of rubble, running interference for me with anybody who tried to get in my way. As we stood in front of the fallen debris he put his hand on my arm, making me turn back. He hesitated, then let me go again without saying anything. He nodded toward the wall and backed away.
I took a deep breath, putting his expression and the world it belonged to behind me as I faced the mass of debris. I ordered the suit on-line, saw the displays materialize in front of my eyes—a meaningless jumble of random shapes. For a minute I thought I’d forgotten how to read.