Other Hydrans passed us as we made our way deeper into the maze of chambers and passages. The unconscious grace of their movements seemed to match the sinuous beauty of the spaces we were passing through. I kept my gaze fixed on the ceiling, the walls, the floor; afraid to meet anyone else’s eyes, afraid I’d catch them looking in through mine.
At last we entered an echoing vault of a room where a dozen other Hydrans waited. They sat or kneeled at a low free-form table, looking toward us as if they’d been expecting us. I looked away from them—looked up, and thought I was looking at the sky. Above us there was a blue translucent dome painted with clouds. Birds, or something like them, were soaring toward the brightness of the sunlit zenith, as if they’d been startled into flight by our arrival.
I stopped dead, looking up; stood staring a moment longer, until my mind finally convinced my eyes that what they were seeing wasn’t real—that the birdlike things were only images, frozen in flight against a painted sky. No wings fluttered; there was no movement toward that burning glaze of light.
I looked down; the room and its faces rushed back into place around me.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Perrymeade murmured as he passed me. “It always stops people cold the first time they see it.”
I followed him, keeping my eyes on his back until I reached the low table. Around it were seats, more than enough, although some of the Hydrans kneeled on mats on the floor. The seats were made of wood like the table; like the table, they’d been carved into nonlinear, organic forms. Their wood smelled of oil and age. I hoped they were more comfortable than they looked.
There was no sign of a high-tech insert on the table or anywhere else in the room, even though this was apparently the meeting space for the only formal government the Hydrans had. I wondered whether they really didn’t need human-style data storage or whether Tau had simply refused to give them access to it.
Hanjen bowed to the waiting Council members. They nodded in return. Perrymeade was already sitting down. I faced the silent circle at last, hesitating as I chose a seat. I recognized two of the Hydrans as Moket and Serali, the ones who’d been at the party last night with Hanjen. There were more older members than younger ones on the Council, but it was divided about equally between the sexes.
All of them looked well fed. They wore new, well-cut clothing that must have come from across the river; the clothes they’d chosen looked expensive, even stylish. It didn’t match what I’d seen on people in Freaktown’s streets. Neither did the jewelry they wore—and there was a lot of it—although some of the pieces were odd and old enough to have been heirlooms. Several of them wore nose rings, which were definitely not the look over in Riverton.
A creature that matched the ceiling’s painted birds perched on one man’s shoulder. I studied it, trying to get a better idea of what it actually was. It was gray-furred, not feathered, more like a bat than a bird, with a long pointed face and enormous ears folded like origami. It raised its head, looking back at me with bright darting eyes.
And then suddenly it launched into the air, spreading leathery wings a handbreadth wide. It flew straight at me, right into my face.
I flung my hands up as claws raked my flesh inside a slapping, flapping confusion of wings. I fell into a chair as the bat-thing lifted off of me again.
I lowered my hands. Figures loomed over me; one of them was Perrymeade. He was speaking to me, but I couldn’t seem to make out the words.
I struggled upright in my seat, smarting with scratches and humiliation; saw someone pass the chittering bat-thing back to its owner.
The Hydran who gathered it into his hands glared at me as if the attack had been my fault, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what any of them thought, what the hell had happened.… Except for the shrill, almost inaudible squeaks of the bat-thing, the room was totally silent.
And then the bat-thing’s owner disappeared.
“What the hell—?” I mumbled, rubbing my face. The words sounded like a shout. The Hydrans were looking back and forth at each other, some of them gesturing in the silence that went on and on. The room was filled with conversation, if only I could have heard it.
My hands tightened over the table edge. Perrymeade sat down beside me, trying not to look as shaken as I did. If he wasn’t fooling me, he wasn’t fooling anyone else. The silence stretched; everyone looked at us, somehow without acknowledging us.
Finally Perrymeade took a deep breath and said, “We’ve come, as you know, to ask your help in finding a kidnapped human child—”
“Excuse me,” Hanjen said, almost impatiently, as if Perrymeade had interrupted some private discussion. Maybe he had. “We must ask if you would please leave us for a time, Mez Perrymeade. We need to speak with this one”—he raised his hand to point at me, a beat late, as if he’d forgotten it was necessary—”alone.” And then, seeing the surprise on Perrymeade’s face, he said, “Forgive me, Janos, we mean no offense. I know we have serious matters to discuss. I promise we will come to that. But—” He shrugged, as if he was saying, You brought him here.
Perrymeade got to his feet, looking down at me where I sat dumbly in my seat. He gave me a strained smile, as if this had been what he’d hoped for all along, as if he counted on me to use this opportunity to make his case with the Hydrans.
I watched him leave the room. I looked down at the tabletop, at my hands still clamped over its edge, the scars standing out on my knuckles. Waiting … Trying to feel something.
Just like they were. They were waiting for me to reach out, to do something. Something impossible.
“Who are you?” Hanjen asked finally, aloud.
“Cat,” I said, glancing up at him, down again.
“That is your Human name?” someone else asked. She spoke slowly, as if having to speak my language was hard for her. “Is that all the name you have?”
It wasn’t the same question that humans always asked me, or at least wanted to. Hydrans had spoken names, and they had real names, the names they carried in the heart of their mind. Names that could only be shared mind-to-mind. I’d had a name like that, once—a name given in love, mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart. A name that I wouldn’t have given to this roomful of strangers passing unspoken judgment on me even if I could have. I shook my head and shrugged. The silence in the room got heavier, weighing on my mind until it crushed every coherent thought.
“We were told last night that you are half Hydran,” Hanjen said. His voice was empty as he used the human’s name for his own people. His face was as empty of clues as my head was empty of thoughts. “We would like to know which of your parents is Hydran?”
“My mother,” I muttered. “Was.”
“Was she from this world?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head.
“Then why have you come here?”
“You know.” I looked up at him, finally.
“Why have you come here?” he asked again, as if I hadn’t answered his question.
Or maybe I hadn’t answered the one he was really asking. I tried again. “I’m with the xenoarch research team Tau hired to study the reefs here on the Homeland.”
He shook his head slightly, and his mouth pinched. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. I sat feeling every muscle in my body tighten as I tried again to imagine what he wanted to hear. “Why did you come to this world?”
I sat and looked from face to face around the table, seeing a dozen faces, smooth, lined, male, female … all of them fine-boned Hydran faces, their green cat-pupiled eyes fixed on me. And suddenly I knew the answer to his question: Because there was a hole in my life. For years I’d wanted to know how it would feel to be surrounded by my mother’s people; needed to know what I’d find in their eyes … whether it could ever be forgiveness.
I looked down. “I don’t know.” My hands made quiet fists. “But I came here today because of the kidnapped child.” I raised my head again. “The boy is helpless; he has severe neurological damage. You have to t
ell us how to find him. Because it’s the right thing to do … and because if you don’t, if HARM uses him to create trouble for Tau with the FTA, Tau will make you all pay—”
“You saw it happen,” Hanjen interrupted, as if he hadn’t been listening. “More than that—you caused it to happen.”
I grimaced. Of course they knew that—they had to know more about what had happened last night than the Corpses did, or I wouldn’t be here. “It was an accident.” They didn’t know everything, or they’d know that.
“Then please tell us why Tau sent you to deliver this message to us?” Hanjen said.
I glanced around the silent circle of Council members, searching for a recognizable response in even one face. “Because I’m—Hydran.” It was hard enough just saying it; suddenly I’d never felt less Hydran in my life, a psionic deaf-mute sitting here in the middle of a debate about life and death. “And because I know what happens to psions who cross Tau.” I put my hand up to my face, feeling scabs and bruises. I lowered it again, laid both hands on the tabletop, where one could touch the other. “They thought you might believe me. That you’d be willing to talk to me … or trust me enough to listen.”
I sucked in a breath as something formless struck a blow behind my eyes, as someone tried to break down my defenses—to discover what was hidden there; why my mind had stopped them all cold.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t.” Someone made a disgusted noise. There was another sourceless collision inside my head. “Stop it!” I shouted, pushing to my feet.
I stood there, barely breathing, while the silence healed again seamlessly. No one else moved; they were all staring at me. I dropped back into my seat.
“Why are you closed, then?” Moket, the woman I’d seen at the reception, demanded, her voice singsongy and sharp. She gestured at my head.
I frowned. “I’m not.” My fingers twisted the gold stud in my ear.
“Perhaps you are not aware,” Hanjen said slowly, as if he was groping for words, “because you are not really Hydran—” He broke off. “I mean, because you have lived so long among Humans … you are not aware that what you are doing is considered offensive.”
“What am I doing—?” I leaned forward, wanting him to tell me it was only that I was talking too much, or too loudly, wearing stupid clothes, forgetting to say “thank you”—
“Your mind is completely … closed.” He glanced away, as if even mentioning it embarrassed him, as if I should have known.
I shook my head.
“Are you a seddik?” someone said. “Have they sent a seddik to us?”
“A what?” I asked.
“No,” Hanjen said tonelessly. “He is not a seddik. A user of nephase,” he looked back at me. “The Humans”—I heard the capital H—”give nephase to our people in their prisons, because otherwise they cannot hold us. Some prisoners become … addicted to the drug, because it blocks their psi. They choose to withdraw from their lives, their Gift … their ‘humanity,’ as you would say. It is a sickness they bring back home and spread among the hopeless.”
I put my hand up to touch the spot behind my ear where nothing was, knowing that a single drugderm of topalase-AC would let me use my psi, anytime, anywhere. With enough drugs to numb the pain I could be a telepath again … just like I could have gotten up and walked on broken legs. But there was nothing behind my ear.
“Why are you closed, then?” the woman repeated.
Hanjen silenced her with a single shake of his head. He faced me without looking directly at me, as if looking at me hurt his eyes. “Among the Community, one tries always to keep one’s mind a little … open, so that others can read one’s mood, see that one’s actions are sincere and well meaning. The more open one is, the more … respected one is. Within limits, of course. Just as to keep a complete silence, to close your mind like a fist, is an insult.”
He met my stare, finally. “To assault your privacy was also an offense—” He glanced at some of the others, who were frowning now around the table. “For which I apologize. I hope you will understand and help us to understand you.” He bent his head, as if he were inviting me to explain … expecting me to open my mind to them, now that he’d shown me what the problem was.
I shook my head.
“You won’t?” Moket snapped. “Then how can we trust you, a stranger … a mixed-blood?” Her tone said half Hydran meant freak on this side of the river too.
“You came into the Community and caused this trouble!” Serali said.
“What are we to think,” someone else muttered, speaking to Hanjen, “when the Humans send such a one to us, asking for our help? Except to think they want trouble for us with the FTA too: maybe an excuse to take over the last of our sacred grounds?”
“Why should we believe anything you say when all you give us is words?”
“I can’t,” I said, my guts knotting, my mind clenched. “I can’t … do it.” Knowing they had every right to ask didn’t change anything. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t. Couldn’t.
“You don’t know how?” another woman, younger, asked me. “You can’t control your Gift?” She glanced at the man sitting next to her. “He is like a—” The words just stopped, as if I’d suddenly gone deaf. She’d slipped into telepathic speech. I wondered if she didn’t want to say it out loud in front of me or whether she didn’t know how to. I watched her make an odd gesture, jerking her hands up.
“No,” I murmured. “I could do it once. I can’t now.” The urge to confess rose in my throat; I swallowed it down.
Hanjen pressed his lips together. “I am what the Humans call an ‘ombudsman,’ you know. I am trusted by the Community to … look into troubled minds. To search out the blockage … to try to heal or resolve it.”
“You can’t help me,” I said, almost angrily. “No one can. A lot of others have tried.”
“A lot of Humans,” he said softly. “Will you allow me—?” He seemed as reluctant to ask it as I was to let it happen. But I realized that if I refused, it would be the last I saw of any of them.
I nodded, my hands white-knuckled. I tried to relax, but the filaments of lambent energy deep in my brain only became more tangled, more impenetrable, the harder I tried to open myself. I felt Hanjen run up on my defenses, his concentration snagging on razor wire as he searched for some unguarded point of entry, some chink in my armor that would give him a way inside.
My birthright had given me just one facet of the Gift, a single psi talent—telepathy. But I’d been good at it, damn good. I was still good at protecting myself. Too good. Nothing got in; nothing got out. The psiotherapists I’d seen had all told me the same thing: Someday I would be in control again; they just couldn’t tell me when. Only I would know when I was ready to become a telepath again.
But I was never going to be ready, not for this—letting a stranger loot the wreckage of my life, letting him put a name to every one of my sins … witness the moment I’d made a bloody ruin of another telepath’s mind and body, using my mind and a gun. I could never let them see what I’d told to Perrymeade and Sand, who’d never understand. I could never let them see the truth—
“Death!” Hanjen spat out the word, pressing his eyes. Slowly he lowered his hands. “You are filled with death.…” He shook his head, staring at me. “You have killed?” he demanded. “How could they send you to us knowing you have done such a thing? Did they think we would not see it? Did they really think we are as blind as they are?”
I shut my eyes. The other Council members stood up one by one around the table, spitting on me with words: spoken words, some in a language that I couldn’t understand … some that I could, and none of them were forgiving, or kind. Then they began to disappear, blinking out of existence as I watched. I felt the soft inrush of air against my skin.
“Stop!” Hanjen said out loud.
There were more angry murmurs from the Hydrans still standing around the table; more silence with hands gesturing, pointing at me. Not one of t
hem looked at me or offered me a chance to explain something that was beyond their comprehension.…
All at once spacetime parted around me; the world went black as I was torn out of reality by a kind of energy transference I recognized instinctively, even though I’d never control it—
And then I was in the courtyard; everything was brightness and confusion. I sat down hard on the ancient tiles, because suddenly there wasn’t a chair under me.
I sat stunned, blinking up at the shadow play of dusty leaves; at Perrymeade hurrying toward me from where he’d been waiting beside the mod. I started to pick myself up.
Suddenly Hanjen was standing there between us. Perrymeade recoiled in surprise; I fell back onto my hands.
“What—?” Perrymeade broke off, tried again. “What does this mean?” The sound of his voice was pathetic, like the look on his face.
Hanjen shook his head. “We cannot have him here,” he said. “You should not have brought him. He is not one of us.”
Perrymeade looked at me, back at Hanjen. “What do you mean?” he said. “Of course he is—”
“He is alive.” Hanjen’s glance touched me, flicked away again. He searched Perrymeade’s face; his eyes shifted, clouding. “I see that you do not understand this, Janos.” His mouth thinned with what could have been frustration, or simply disgust. “If you wish to discuss the kidnapping further, join us inside. But not with this one.” He turned his back on us both as he said it. He walked away, moving with inhuman grace, but still moving like a human, so that Perrymeade could follow.
Perrymeade stopped beside me. He put out a hand to help me up. “What happened—?” he murmured.
I struggled to my feet, ignoring his outstretched hand. “You did. Fuck you. Get away from me.” I turned my back on him and the sight of everything behind him, everything he stood for.