I held her back as she would have crossed the room. (Don’t,) I thought. (It isn’t you. It isn’t us. It’s her.)
(She’s my sister—) Miya shook her head, straining against my grip as the memories of a lifetime filled her mind. (Naoh needs me. Who else does she have? I can help her—) I felt her loyalties slipping.
(Dammit, she tried to kill us!) I forced Miya to drink my memories with her own, like blood in wine. (She’s sucking you in; she’s bes’ mod.…)
Miya pulled her gaze away from Naoh’s unyielding back. She looked into Joby’s eyes, into mine … collided with the ice dam of control that barely held in my anger, and my fear of losing her again to Naoh.
I felt what it cost her to believe me; realized what she couldn’t bear to let herself see, that for Naoh their lifelong bond had become just a weakness to be exploited.…
Her resolve hardened into bitterness as she watched her sister blow like a burning wind through the minds of everyone else in the room, oblivious to us now.
I stiffened as Naoh singled out Ronin. In an eyeblink, she was across the room in front of him. She pinned him against the wall with a telekinetic field, stopping short of touching him physically. His eyes glazed as she invaded his mind, ready to riffle through his memories back to the day he was born. Nobody moved to stop her.
“Naoh!” I yelled, loud enough to break even her concentration. “Get off him, you mindfucking bitch!” I crossed the room, fists clenched.
She turned around, and her burning stare told me she would have scrambled my brains if she could have. But she couldn’t. She turned back to Ronin. This time she didn’t touch him, even with her mind. She only said, out loud, “So you come from the FTA, and you claim you have the power to help us?” She was speaking to him in Standard; I’d never heard her use it before. They all speak Standard, Perrymeade had said once. Probably she always had too; never using it had been intentional, political.
Ronin nodded, doing his best to hide his sudden terror and his sudden relief. He glanced at Perrymeade, at Hanjen, with something that was half appeal and half incomprehension.
“Then why are you here, hiding from the Humans like a mebbet?”
Hanjen had been standing beside Perrymeade. Suddenly he was between Ronin and Naoh. Ronin pressed back against the wall again, his face going white. “He is here as my guest,” Hanjen said, “to learn about our situation. And he is here for his own safety.” He touched Ronin’s arm, and there was something more than just physical reassurance in the way it made Ronin suddenly relax. Hanjen had reached into his mind without his realizing it, spreading calm over the troubled water of his emotions. Hanjen led Ronin to a cushioned settee across the room. Ronin sat down on it almost reluctantly, like he was afraid it might disappear from under him.
Naoh stood with her arms crossed, her disdain clear enough for even a Human to read, her desperation so obvious to me that I almost felt sorry for her. Her hair was filthy and matted; her clothes looked like she’d been sleeping in them. Her face was thinner and harder than I remembered, her mouth even more bitter, her eyes lost in deep hollows of fatigue.
“I thought you said you didn’t know where she was,” Perrymeade murmured to Hanjen.
“I didn’t know.” Hanjen shook his head, looking from Naoh to us—looking at Miya, with more on his mind than he was saying out loud.
Miya looked down and didn’t answer. Or maybe that was all the answer she had.
“We’re sisters,” Naoh said defiantly, like Miya’s shamefaced silence was just one more body blow to her self-control. “We are all the family we have, because Humans killed our parents. The last of it. Forever.” She spoke the words with a venom that made Hanjen flinch. “No matter what happens, nothing is stronger than that.”
“It’s true,” Miya said quietly, looking at her sister with something that was almost compassion. “If she’s nearby, I know … we always know. Ever since our parents died.…” She gave a small, helpless shrug; but I felt her anguish as she glanced at me, knowing how often and how profoundly Naoh had violated everything that bond of blood should have represented. “She knew I was staying with you. Hanjen. And I knew she was watching, listening.”
“I am her conscience, Hanjen,” Naoh said. “And yours.” She looked away again at Ronin and the others, her eyes avoiding me. “Is this really the man you expect to save you—?” When I couldn’t. Her eyes finished the thought. “This pitiful, braindead Human?”
Ronin stiffened, like the verbal slap had stung his courage back to life. “I may not seem like much alone … Naoh,” he said, meeting her stare. He gestured at his ruined uniform. “But I am not alone … and I’m not powerless. Tau’s negligence killed the three other people who came with me—” He broke off. “But they didn’t kill me. I’m going to make them regret that. There’s a Federation Transport Authority embargo-class ship in planetary orbit above Refuge. I have more than enough reason to contact them. I want to do everything I can to help your people, as well as protect our contract laborers, if you can give me enough good reasons.”
“How will you contact the ship?” I asked, remembering that we’d made him leave his databand behind.
“There’s a special transmitter on my databand. We all have them, we call it the ‘deadman switch’—” He broke off again, as what must have been a sardonic joke for too long suddenly wasn’t funny. “It … if it isn’t reset on a regular schedule, it automatically contacts the ship. They’ll assume the worst, and notify the home office—and Draco, in this case. In the meantime, they’ll send down their tactical enforcement unit: sanctions will be imposed immediately. All shipping schedules will be on hold until the situation is resolved to the FTA’s satisfaction.” There was a reason why Tau, and even Draco, were afraid of the FTA when it was doing its job.
Just speaking the words gave Ronin strength, the way hearing them changed the faces of everyone listening—including Naoh.
“Naoh,” Miya said, and I felt her praying that there was still something rational and reachable inside her sister’s mind. “This is the last chance our people have for the future we tried to give them. Even Hanjen understands the Way we were meant to follow now.” She was still speaking Standard, like she wanted Ronin to follow it.
“What do you mean?” Naoh demanded, frowning.
Miya glanced at me. “Out in the Homeland, Bian showed me how our Gift binds us to the an lirr, to this world.” Naoh’s frown deepened, and I looked at Miya in surprise.
She went on, inside our heads this time; I felt her relief as she released herself from words. She showed me how my unthinking question—What if the an lirr came back?—had entered her thoughts like a grain of sand; how what had begun as a painful reminder of loss had become layered with possibilities, until at last she had offered Hanjen a pearl of insight, a gift of hope: the possibility that if the Community could regain their symbiosis with the an lirr, they could rekindle their sense of worth as a people. With Ronin’s support, Tau could be forced to stop manipulating the cloud-whales’ migrations.…
Miya paused, searching for some detail she hadn’t shown her sister yet, the thing that would tip the scales of belief. “Naoh,” I said, not sure why I was even trying to fill the silence, after what Naoh had done to me. Except that Miya had suffered enough, and I loved Miya more than I’d ever hate her sister.… “At Tau’s mining interface my Gift let me read the reefs in ways that Humans can’t. They miss incredible things in the matrix without psi to guide them. It made me … valuable to them. It helped keep me alive. If it’s valuable to them, it can be valuable to the Community. It’s something we have that they want. We can use that—”
“They will never trust us enough.” Naoh shook her head, but at least she acknowledged me.
I shrugged. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned living with Humans, it’s ‘Never underestimate the power of greed.’” I gestured at Ronin. “Show Ronin the truth, the way you showed it to me once. Let him see exactly what your people—our peo
ple—need.” I remembered my nightmare tour of Freaktown, its medical center, the back-alley drug hole where I’d met Navu. “And then let him help us get it.”
“Navu,” Miya said, falling back into Hydran as she caught the echo in my thoughts. “We can get him the kind of help he needs; we can get the Humans’ drugs off our streets—”
“It’s too late,” Naoh said, her voice flat. “Navu is dead.”
Miya made a sound as if someone had hit her in the stomach, and Joby whimpered. “Oh, God,” she breathed, the Human words falling from her lips into a fractured silence. “How? Why—?”
“Because the supply of drugs stopped, with everything else, until Hanjen gave you up to the Humans,” Naoh said, her voice corroded by grief. “He couldn’t live without it, with what he had to feel. He … he stopped his own heart. And you caused it! It was your fault—you and that half-Human mebtaku!” Tears spilled out of her eyes, down her face. “If you wanted so much to be Human, Miya, why not just use the drugs? Then the only life you ruined would have been your own!”
“And would you have been happy to sell them to me too?” Miya asked, with sudden anger. I felt her compassion shrivel and die. Joby gave a small squeak as she held him too close. “I never worked for Humans because I thought they were better than I was! I did it because I believed in us … and that both our peoples had Gifts to share.”
Naoh stiffened; so did Hanjen, across the room. For a moment Naoh wavered, as the words ripped open her denial and left her staring at the truth. She shook her head, but she was just shaking off the temptation to let herself believe anything we’d said. She didn’t bother to argue Miya’s point or even defend herself against it. She looked at Ronin again. “I’ll be watching what you do,” she said in Standard. “And if it isn’t enough—” She disappeared, leaving the threat hanging unfinished in the air.
The Humans in the room, and probably the Hydrans, let out a collective held breath.
“What did she mean?” Ronin asked, frowning. “Is she actually dangerous?” He looked at Hanjen.
“Naoh.…” Hanjen gestured at his head, still stunned, as if after learning about her drug dealing he’d forgotten the words to explain mental illness in Standard. “She can do no real harm without harming herself.”
I thought again about what she’d done with her rabble-rousing; what she’d done to me. But looking at Miya, I didn’t press the point.
Perrymeade turned to Ronin finally and said, “You’ll be safe here … as safe as anywhere on the planet. We have to get back across the river, before someone misses us.” He glanced at Kissindre and Wauno, back at Ronin’s uncertain face. “Hanjen and Miya and Cat are the best informants you’ll find on the problems of the Hydran Community. They can explain all the things that I … that I just never understood.” He looked down.
Miya set Joby down; urged him to cross the room to Perrymeade, slow step by slow step. I felt the effort of her concentration as she guided him. Perrymeade kneeled down and took Joby into his arms.
“Uncle Janos,” Joby murmured, the words lisped but perfectly clear. He rested his head on Perrymeade’s shoulder, hugging him.
Perrymeade looked up at Miya, his mind overflowing with tenderness/apology/loss/gratitude, until even his face was too painful to look at. “Take care of him,” he murmured. “I know you’ll take good care of him. Until it’s safe for all of you to come back across the river.”
Miya nodded, her own face full of compassion.
Kissindre moved almost hesitantly to her uncle’s side. She touched Joby’s dark hair with a gentle hand. Joby glanced up, and they both smiled. She moved back again as Perrymeade released Joby from his arms, murmuring a good-bye as his nephew started back toward Miya.
Kissindre and Perrymeade followed Joby with their eyes, until they were both looking at Miya, at me, at the way we were standing together, touching each other.
I met Kissindre’s clear blue stare, wishing I could look away from it. “I’m sorry, Kiss…” I murmured, not able to tell her what I felt, not able to show her either; not like this.
But she smiled and finished a trajectory back to Wauno’s side. He put his arm around her and grinned, shrugging. “It’s all right,” she said, smiling up at him, and back at me. “Sometimes things actually do work out.”
I felt a smile of relief come out on my face, the fist of my thoughts loosened until I could share them again with Miya. I felt her curiosity settle on the surface of my mind; but she only picked Joby up again and didn’t ask me any questions.
Wauno led the others out the way they’d come in. Ronin watched them go, watched us stay behind, with a lot less wariness than he would have shown five minutes before. I wondered if he’d finally come to see that we really did have something in common. But as the room emptied, leaving the five of us to awkward silence, exhaustion smothered his thoughts like a pillow.
Hanjen moved to his side, filling the void left by the others’ departure. He seemed to feel Ronin’s exhaustion as deeply as Ronin did; or maybe he was just that exhausted himself. He and Miya were both wearing long, shapeless tunics that must be sleep shirts. I realized that it had to be near dawn. The day Ronin and I had just been through must have been the longest day of his life. And probably the worst. He sagged forward on the cushioned seat, resting his head in his hands.
Hanjen touched Ronin’s shoulder, quietly urging him to lie down and rest, telling him that there would be time enough to discuss injustice, and to grieve, tomorrow; but it was time for all of us to rest, now.…
There was a subliminal psi touch buried in the comforting words; he was using his psi to plant suggestions of healing and calm and reassurance. I knew that kind of subtle touch, what it could do, how much it could mean.… I wondered how often he’d used it in his work as an ombudsman. As far as I knew he didn’t use it when he was negotiating with Humans. I wondered whether this was the first time he’d ever met—or had to enter the mind of—a Human whose emotions had been stripped raw.
I glanced at Miya as something wistful and almost forlorn whispered through my thoughts. She watched Ronin lie down where he was and Hanjen cover him with a blanket; I shared her memory of a time long ago when her own loss had been as fresh, and Hanjen had given her the same comfort, with a touch and a thought that were kindness itself.… She held Joby tighter, stroking his hair, murmuring something I couldn’t quite make out. It sounded like a song, or maybe a prayer.
Hanjen straightened up again. He looked at us standing together and smiled. I didn’t know if he was smiling at the sight of us together or just at the proof that he hadn’t sold his soul to the Humans after all. “The Way has brought us safely home,” he murmured. “We should rest now—while we have a resting place.” He yawned, as if he’d convinced himself at least that the rest was long overdue. He went off in the direction of his room without speaking, leaving a kind of benediction in our minds.
Miya led me into the room where she’d been sleeping—the room I’d slept in once. I wondered whether she’d known that.
(Yes,) she thought, and when I looked at her, there were tears in her eyes.
I bit my lip, wanting to hold her, but waited while she settled Joby into one of the hammocks suspended halfway between the ceiling and floor. She rocked him gently, humming a tune I felt as much as heard, soothing him to sleep.
I stood looking at the other hammock, remembering how I’d spent my only night in this room sleeping on the floor. I suddenly felt an exhaustion that made the way I’d felt earlier seem like a good night’s sleep.
Miya moved away from Joby’s hammock and put her arms around me. She kissed me like she’d known—must have known—what I’d been wanting, aching for.… My fatigue vanished like a shadow in the sun. I felt giddy, like gravity had stopped, and we were rising into the air.…
We were. I realized, with the fraction of my mind that was still halfway coherent, that we were slowly rising, spiraling upward, drifting toward the second hammock together. Miya settle
d us into its yielding crescent. Our bodies set it rocking gently as we began to touch and kiss and maneuver into position, sinking deeper into need and pleasure, into each other’s bodies and minds and souls.…
After a long while with no coherent thought at all, only sensation, we lay quiet again in the hammock’s soft embrace. After a longer time, I thought, (Miya, what you told Naoh, about the an lirr: that if they returned, it could be the key to the Community’s survival … I gave you that idea?)
She nodded without moving. (Sometimes it takes an outsider’s eye to see what no one sees clearly from the inside—)
Pain caught in my chest.
(What—?) Miya thought, as the pain impaled us both.
(Outsider,) I thought, and without wanting to, (mebtaku.)
(Bian.) She touched my cheek gently. (No Human ever had that insight either, in all the years they’ve mined the reefs, in all the time since they came here. No one without the Gift could have had it.) Her fingers traced the not-quite-Human, not-quite-Hydran contours of my face. (Did it honestly never occur to you, nasheirtah,) she thought, (that you might be something better than either one?)
“Miya—”
Her fingers touched my lips, silencing me. (When I shared your mind that night I first saw you … that was the first time I really believed Humans and the Community could trust each other, at least enough so that we could share this world in peace. And I thought, if only there was something that could make all of them see this world like you do … like we do …) The words dissolved into images of the monastery, the reefs, the secrets of the Hydran past that we’d explored together. (I’d always wanted to believe our peoples could find a common ground.… No one but you ever made it seem possible to me.) She pictured the future unfolding as it should: (We were together now, the Way had led me back to her, and Joby back to us.) She saw us together at the monastery, the shue where the an lirr had thought about healing, where now we would have the time we needed to heal ourselves.… (Everything will be all right now.)
(Don’t say that!) I thought. (Don’t ever say that, not ever—)