“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”
Sand made a soft noise of amusement as he glanced at my bare, scarred wrist. “All that aside,” he said, “not only will neither Draco nor Tau take responsibility for your safety if you remain here—we have the legal right to deport you. Under corporate law, you are guilty of everything from using profanity in public to sedition. If you were to stay on Refuge, we would have to prosecute you on all charges.” He shrugged. “Borosage got what he deserved,” he murmured. “Consider yourself lucky.”
“The agreement said amnesty for all HARM members—”
“But you’re not Hydran. You’re a registered citizen of the Federation. We didn’t take your databand away from you, after all. You lost it.”
“Tau’s CorpSec tortured me! I was illegally detained as a contract laborer! You want to talk about crimes—”
He held up his hand. “Spare me … spare yourself. The decision has already been made. It will not be changed. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He walked away and left us standing there.
I faced Ronin again. “They don’t have the right. Tell him—”
Ronin’s eyes were nothing but shadow. “I can’t do anything. It’s one of the points we had to grant them during the treaty negotiations. In order to get your record cleared of Tau’s criminal charges, we had to agree that you would leave Refuge.”
“You son of a bitch,” I said. “You can’t do this to me.”
“You broke the laws of this world, dammit!” he said, his voice rising. “You saved my life, but you also broke the law! I got you everything you wanted for the Hydrans, to the best of my ability! But to do that, I had to make compromises. That’s how it works.”
“That’s not good enough.” My eyes blurred; I looked away. Miya—
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I wish it was.” And I knew from his voice that he was thinking just like I was of Miya, and Joby: he’d seen us together, he knew what they meant to me. He understood what this was going to do to us.… And he was sorry. But that didn’t change anything.
“Goddamn.…” I turned away, my voice shaking, filled with a pain so deep and sudden that it made me want to cry out. I searched the building with my thoughts, searching for Miya. But she’d disappeared from my mind like she’d disappeared from the room, her own thoughts focused completely on Joby or on death.
Ronin was just as silent behind me, like he was waiting for me to get control of myself. Or maybe he just had no idea of what to do next, any more than I did.
I turned back, finally, because I couldn’t stand here in this empty hall forever, with Ronin hovering at my back like a bug hypnotized by a light, turning my grief into some kind of freak show. “… got to find Miya,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady as long as I didn’t look at him. I headed for the doorway that Miya had gone through.
“Cat,” Ronin called, behind me.
I stopped, my hands tightening into fists, but I didn’t turn around. “What—?”
A holographic image of Natan Isplanasky appeared suddenly in the air in front of me: “I wanted to thank you,” he said. His disembodied head looked me straight in the eyes, like he could actually see me. “And I wanted to ask whether you’d consider doing the kind of work Ronin does, for me, for the FTA—”
I let out a laugh of disbelief. I stood there, still laughing out loud, as I gouged out his phantom eyes with my trembling thumbs. “You bastards—!” I shouted as I turned back to Ronin. “You know what?” I wasn’t laughing now. “The last time the FTA asked me to work for them, they’d just buttfucked me too.”
He looked at me blankly.
“The telhassium mines, on Cinder: a combine conspiracy, a psion terrorist called Quicksilver. The FTA used some freaks—and I mean used—to bring him down. Maybe you remember.”
He remembered. “That was you? You were one of them?”
“Tell Isplanasky he’s mistaken me for somebody who gives a shit,” I said, turning away again.
“He told me what you did for Lady Elnear taMing,” Ronin called out. “I know what you did here. I don’t think he’s mistaken.”
I stopped again, not turning back this time. “You’ve been wrong before,” I said thickly. I blew through Isplanasky’s image like it was smoke and went on across the room.
“Think about it,” Ronin called. “Just think about it—”
I forced my hands open at my sides. I made it to the doorway without breaking down, and went on through.
Three faces looked up at me together, from where three people crouched like one around Naoh’s body. Natasa was gone, and he’d taken Joby with him. I realized from what showed on the faces of Hanjen and Perrymeade as they slowly got to their feet that they already knew what I’d just found out about my future, or lack of one. I choked on the wet ash of guilt and pity in their stares. Miya looked up at me, and I felt her incomprehension, dulled by grief. She caught my strengthless hand, pulling herself up, and her mind opened floodgates of love/loss/pain/need/love.
And then she made a small, strangled noise. “No…” she whispered, looking at Hanjen in disbelief, looking back at me as his nod confirmed the truth. “No, no—!” She lunged at him. Her fingers dug into his clothes, clawed at his flesh, like they were lies she could tear away.
Hanjen stood passively, grimacing with pain but not making a move to protect himself, until at last she clung to him, strength-less, hopeless. She didn’t resist as I pulled her away from him, into my arms. We held each other for a long time.
Finally I felt someone’s hands separate us, with gentle insistence.
Miya looked up at Hanjen, her eyes bleak. “Leave us alone,” she said bitterly, out loud. “Why can’t you—?”
“Miya…” he murmured. “The treaty is our last chance for survival as a people. The Way I have walked all my life was leading me to this—the Way that we both shared for so long. I know now that Bian was meant to walk it with us. If it had not been for him…” He looked at me. “I swear by the Allsoul … I did all I could to stop this.” He looked down. “But I couldn’t stop it. Not if it meant losing everything.…”
Miya’s head jerked once, a nod, and I knew that she believed him, even though she didn’t answer him, even if she’d never forgive him any more than I would.
“We must … take care of your sister,” he murmured. “Before the Humans return and try to take her body away.” I realized there was no sign of Borosage’s body. The Corpses must have taken his body away already.
“What do you need to do now?” Perrymeade asked him awkwardly. “Is there anything I can do to help—?” He didn’t make the same offer to Miya or to me. He didn’t even meet our eyes. Maybe as far as he was concerned we were beyond help.
“We will take her back across the river, to rejoin the earth,” Hanjen said, the formality of the words barely keeping them intelligible.
“I’ll arrange for Wauno to take you back—”
“We have no need for that,” Hanjen said gently. “But thank you, Janos.” He bowed, a sign of honor and respect; one that wasn’t meaningless this time. “You have become the advocate—and true friend—that you were meant to be.”
“That I always should have been,” Perrymeade murmured, glancing down. “That I always wanted to be, really.” He looked up again, at us all.
I turned my back on him.
“I want to go with you,” I said softly to Miya. “Let me come with you.” I looked away from Miya and Hanjen, at Naoh’s motionless body.
“Cat—” Perrymeade began, and looking at him I saw the fear in his eyes that I meant to go for good. That my grief and anger, or Miya’s, might knock the scales out of precarious balance again, now that they had finally been set to weigh fairly between Hydrans and Humans.
“Shut up,” I said, glaring at him. “I need a chance to say goodbye. You have to give me that much … that much time. I won’t make trouble—” glancing at Hanjen, at Miya. “I’ll do what you wa
nt. But all of you owe me that much. And none of you can say I don’t keep my promises.”
Perrymeade took a deep breath, and nodded.
Hanjen nodded too, with a solemn lack of expression that could have meant anything or nothing. Only Miya really looked at me, with her mouth quivering and her eyes full of unshed tears. Hanjen mindspoke with Miya for a long time, keeping it private even from me. Her gaze broke, finally; she stared at the floor, and her tears dripped onto the spotless carpet as she said aloud to Perrymeade, “We will return tomorrow.”
Perrymeade watched silently as Hanjen and Miya gathered themselves for the difficult jump. I felt Miya’s grip close on my arm, on my mind. Perrymeade and the room did a fade to black.
Suddenly we were standing on the river shore, with the shadowed reefs rising up around us. I shook the echoes of the Aerie out of my head; looked at Miya, realizing that we’d returned to the shue we’d once gone to with Grandmother, seeking answers that already lay inside us.…
Miya and Hanjen kneeled down on the stones of the shore beside Naoh’s body, gazing at it in perfect stillness, like they were praying; but the only sound I could hear was the sound of the river flowing.
I took the few hard Human steps to Miya’s side, kneeled down, and touched her.
She didn’t startle, didn’t move, except to reach up and take my hand. The circuit of contact between us opened, and I felt the words flow into my head, filling my thoughts with a song of completion, of sorrow/regret/longing, and finally relief that one more journey on the spiral Way had ended, and a lost soul had returned to its starting point, to begin yet another journey.…
The talons of my own fresh loss closed on my heart, crushing my hope, my senses, my concentration … I let go of Miya’s hand before the recoil of my thoughts poisoned her prayers. Alone in my mind, alone in the dark, there was nothing but the silence of broken promises.
I opened my eyes to the daylight and looked away along the shore. I wondered whether we were going to make the journey by boat into the hidden heart of the reefs … wondered how the Hydrans buried their dead. All I’d seen were artifacts inside the holy place—no trace of their owners. No trace.
I looked up at the reefs, down at Naoh’s body, at Miya and Hanjen. I took Miya’s hand again, and this time I let go of myself, let their prayers fill my head like the voiceless song of angels or of ancestors. This time I found the courage to listen, letting the prayer touch me, the mourning have its weight.
The dreamfall of Miya’s memories fell silently, softly, inside me, until I didn’t know anymore whether I was looking at her or looking at myself, until the death mask that I secretly saw whenever I looked in the mirror became the mirror, the shadows became light, and I saw my face in hers and hers in mine again, and knew there was a reason to go on living.
(Namaste,) Hanjen murmured. Miya echoed it, and I echoed it: (We are one.) The prayers for the dead were finished, and in the stillness that followed, my thoughts suddenly ignited with a burst of psi energy that blacked out my vision from the inside.
When my sight cleared, Miya and Hanjen were still kneeling on the stones, and the space between them was empty. Naoh was gone.
Before I could ask where—? the answer filled my eyes. Into the reefs. To join her ancestors’ cast-off flesh and the cloud-whales’ cast-off dreams; a tradition that must have had meaning for generations beyond remembering.
Miya looked up at last. Her eyes were clear again, rain-washed bright—until they met mine.
And as she went on looking at me, at what lay behind my own eyes, I suddenly realized that she could have stopped her sister. She’d protected herself, and me, from the recoil of Naoh’s death wish. But she could have done more. She could have stopped it, as surely as she could have stopped her sister from stepping off a cliff.
But she hadn’t.
I didn’t ask her why. I knew, as surely as I knew that she’d had a choice and made it.
She touched my cheek, and her eyes filled with tears again. I raised my hand, surprised to feel wetness on my face, tracks of stinging heat in the cold wind. I wondered how long they’d been there.
(Namaste,) she thought, and her tears fell harder as I took her in my arms.
Hanjen stayed where he was, kneeling on the empty shore. He watched us just long enough to let me sense his guilt, his grief, his shame, his anger/frustration at fate—the emotions that wouldn’t even grant me the satisfaction of hating him for what he’d done. He looked down again, tracing designs in the pebbles. I didn’t know whether it was some final ritual act, or whether he was just trying to grant us a privacy his presence made impossible.
It didn’t matter, any more than it mattered whether he understood what we were feeling. All that mattered now was that tomorrow I’d be gone from Refuge, more completely than Naoh, and right now I didn’t know how I was going to bear it.
(Namaste,) I thought, but the tears went on running down my face, because it was nothing but a lie.
THIRTY-ONE
I LOOKED OUT the transport’s wide window as we left Tau Riverton, watching the panorama of the reefs—the sheer-walled karst-form peaks, the shining thread of the river—as the view widened and fell away. I remembered seeing that same view as we’d arrived from Firstfall. My mind had been a blank slate then; it had been a striking view, nothing more. It seemed impossible to me now that I could have been so naive, so blind, only weeks ago.
(Cat—) Miya’s presence stirred in my mind.
(Miya…) I thought, still holding her inside me the way I’d held her for the last time this morning in the open square by the waiting transport while they all watched: Hanjen and Perrymeade, Sand and Natasa. Kissindre held Wauno’s arm in a death grip, anchoring herself, like she was afraid the same unseen force that was tearing me loose from Refuge might suddenly lay its hands on her.
Joby had been there too, in Miya’s arms, in mine, and there’d been tears on his face as I kissed his forehead and told him goodbye. And he’d wanted to know why? and he’d wanted to know when would I come back? and I couldn’t think of an answer to either of those things that he would have understood.
Instead I handed him the cloud-watcher’s lenses that Wauno had given to me, and told him to watch the sky, because soon the an lirr would come back to Riverton, his home. And he’d asked me, Then will you come back too—? and I couldn’t answer that, any more than I could ask Miya the only thing I’d wanted to ask her all through the sleepless hours of last night: Come with me—?
Because she wouldn’t; because she couldn’t.… Because no matter how much we needed each other—to heal, to make ourselves whole—Joby needed her more than I did, and we both knew it.
“You didn’t ask her to come with you?” Wauno said finally, breaking the silence he’d kept ever since the transport had lifted from the square.
I shook my head. I realized that the thought must actually have reached his mind, and I didn’t even care.
“Why not?” he asked softly, almost diffidently.
I looked over at him, surprised, because it wasn’t like him to ask that kind of question. “Joby,” I said, finally, and looked away again.
He grimaced, like he realized he should have known that without having to ask. After a while, he said, “What you did here—what you started—will be good for everybody. Someday even Tau will be able to see that.”
“Hell will freeze over first,” I said, frowning at the empty sky. “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”
He shook his head. “The system will forget about you personally a long time before that. Most people have short memories. Wait a little, till things shake out here. Then you can come back—”
“‘The Net doesn’t forget,’” I said. “Ever.” I’d trip some flag in Tau’s security programming if I ever tried to set foot on Refuge again; even I knew that much about the system.
(The system—) The thought echoed in my head.
Like a ghost in the machine. (Miya—?) I thought, remembering sudd
enly what she knew—what I’d taught her. If the restrictions on Hydrans using technology were lifted, like the treaty promised, someday she might find a way to make even a thinking machine forget.…
I breathed on an ember of hope, trying to keep it alive in the wasteland of my thoughts. My telepathic link with Miya was starting to fray as the distance between us grew; with every breath, I lost another shining filament of contact, until at last she disappeared into the static hissing of blood rushing through my arteries and veins: the sound of solitary confinement, the life sentence my body had given to my brain.
Wauno didn’t say anything more, or if he did I didn’t hear him. I watched the land below change and change again, sifting through the static in my head for any last trace of Miya, any stray thought, drinking the bittersweet dregs of longing.
By now the land below me looked totally unfamiliar. I could already have been on another world as I felt Miya’s last straining fingertip of thought slip from mine and vanish into the trackless silence where all Humans lived forever.
I went on staring out at the day, at the surface of Refuge flowing past beneath us, still searching for some ray of the light no eye could see.
Wauno nudged me, finally, and I realized that he’d been trying to get my attention. I looked at him, feeling a kind of disbelief, like I’d actually forgotten he existed. He pressed cloud-spotting lenses into my hands and pointed. “Look. They’re coming back.”
I held the lenses up to my eyes, and saw the an lirr. They moved across the face of the sun, their formless bodies haloed with sundogs, colors bleeding through the spectrum across their ever-changing faces. I watched the surreal silver rain of their cast-off dreams.
I wondered then whether the truth the Creators had meant for us—both Hydrans and Humans—to understand, every time we looked up, had been the opposite of the message they’d left us in the Monument. The Monument was sterile, changeless perfection; a shrine to universal law. The cloud-whales’ endless metamorphosis said that nothing was fixed in our individual lives, that every moment our fates changed, at any moment they could change again.…