(I know, I know.… Struggling up out of her nightmares, dazed, torn, falling back, into my own: In the mines, breathing poisoned air, beaten starved buried alive in the freezing guts of an alien world. No rest, no hope, no night or day … no escape, no end except a dead end. Warm bodies, cheaper than cold machines. No one caring if you lived or died, until finally even you didn’t care, betrayed, abandoned, a thing used by things.…)
Hate them I hate them!!!/*Stars*/ Kinba, Hedo, an endless wheel flickering changing offering betraying humiliating tormenting … no one in all the space of the living who was not there to torture/*ripping forcing violation death*/ Let me go oh let me die! die! die! Ruined, infected, weak degraded coward!! No reason to live no reason no no
(Her hands from another world, the real world, flailing, clawing, reaching for my throat; my body sprawled against her own, holding it down, holding the hands away from her face, from finding a weapon. The false light of a new day breaking, showing me the truth—life was the nightmare, and there was no waking out of it. This was real, and reality was no one’s dream. They sang it in the streets … the streets of Oldcity, the faces of a lifetime glaring down like floodlights, smothering me in spit and blows and ugly laughter: City-boy, halfbreed, bondie, scum. All shouting whispering thinking it … their hands fists, their feet on my neck; taking what they wanted, over and over, and never giving a word, a touch, no friendship, no kindness, no reason—
(“Let me help you.” Jule … Jule, saying four words that I’d never heard from anyone before, touching my mind with gentleness, making me see the world in the mirror and not hate it any more. There was a reason, there was.… Ineh! Listen, listen to me, fighting upstream against the flood of two rivers. It doesn’t matter what happened, none of it, none of them. What they did to you, or me, it isn’t us, it hasn’t changed the truth—Repeating it over and over and over and getting nowhere; losing strength, losing—You have a gift, reaching out to the world, reaching out to me, so many that need it, really need it. Not sick, only like you are or I am, sick of hatred and pain—)
Hatred pain/*nails thorns iron*/ nothing else real, no one not evil ugly empty human!… herself, evil ugly human corrupted … I want to die! let me let me go—
(Not human! No, you aren’t, you never will be—they’ll never let you be; be glad of it. Remember who you were, remember your real people, everything you shared with them—)
Nooo! wild anguish, denial, terror—
(Yes! You belong to your people, you can help them, share with them—)
No no gone lost abandoned betrayed— Herself, themselves, betrayed, lost.… Faces, loved faces torn away; torn apart by parting, minds torn apart families torn apart, lost in the endless darkness of space lost forever, forever, pain going on forever lost in pain.…
(Lost in my own pain, my people lost to me, lost in the endless darkness, lost forever … No! stop … terror, pain, memories, screams echoing in an alley-end—in a child’s ears, in a child’s mind.… Stop, stop it!)
New world harsh ugly gray prison walls gray minds hunger hatred fear … minds sharing shriveling breaking sealing shut, closing out hunger hatred loss each other giving giving less, giving nothing, giving out giving in … betraying, abandoning, surrendering—
(It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Find your way back, they’ll take you back; they have to. Only one thing, one thing could never be forgiven.)
Too far! Too long, too much shame filth ugliness! Never return, never forgiveness enough for so much shame. Only death only death forgives!
(No. Not death—only death never forgives. Only death is never forgiven.… Choking, suffocating, fluid: my mind filling up with blood—no no—No forgiveness. No death for a killer no help for a cripple—me, not you! My punishment, my guilt, my shame! The weapon lying in my hands and the hatred in my soul and an enemy inside my mind showing me that I had no right to pride or love or loyalty, halfbreed scum I ought to be dead! Like my dreams my memories my mother in an Oldcity alley, screaming and screaming inside my head until I can’t hear anything at all.… She died, and I couldn’t save her. She died inside my head and I didn’t, and that made me human enough to hate and kill. No matter that it saved a life, two lives, three—my own.… I could, I had to, I wanted to—I did.
(Mind inside mind exploding like a star, burning out circuits senses soul … lost in a rain of black ashes falling through silence. Silence and blackness—no light no sound no way back to the land of life … dead inside my own body. Lie down and die, murderer, betrayer, failure! black ashes to drown in, ashes blood death only death forgives, darkness, darkness soft and deep, drowning.…)
Light breaking like sunrise, streaming through the choking fall of death. See death, see it for Nothing, absence denial loss fear escape—lifeless beautyless emptiness … Light growing stronger, surrounds crystalizes dissolves darkness—(I remember, I remember being wrapped in light, Jule, Siebeling, mind joining mind strong enough to drive out any pain). Light rising suffusing, golden, opening onto sky, endless rumpled fields of whiteness, clouds (snow the snowfields of another world, remembered world, spring green mountains rising impossibly from snow against a sapphire rain-washed sky: proving beauty still existed, trust, friendship, love).… Death destroys us, hate/pain makes us blind; but those things still exist, still live and are true within us without us. True beyond us—true because of us, true between us, nothing hidden now, my name written on my heart, read it, read it and show me your own, let me in.… Light growing stronger brighter incandescent, dissolving pain, hatred grief, loosening bonds setting free, dissolving into the universal heartbeat promise refuge peace, peace, peace.…
* * *
I woke, and waking was like a dream. I moved through slowtime, the room flowed around me like honey as I lifted my head. Ineh was beside me, eyes shut, barely breathing. Nothing reached me now from her mind, but one of her hands was locked inside my own like a double vise; my arm was raw with scratches. Slowly I knew that my hand was aching with cramp, my whole body was locked in a cramp, my skin burned and the room stank of sweat and sickness. Ineh’s face was bruised and hollow, her hair snarled like weeds; her own genuine body lay beside me, wasted by drugs. There was nothing hidden now; but I couldn’t be sorry, only glad. Nothing was hidden between us; nothing hidden from ourselves. She had shown me the name hidden in her soul, and shown me my own; we had shared the understanding that surpassed all truth. I could see again—and everything I saw was beautiful. I let my head fall back, my empty mind was full of peace, and I slept.
* * *
When I came to again there was no one beside me. I reached out with my mind, groping, and found nothing. Then I believed it. I dragged myself to the edge of the platform and looked down—had to shut my eyes. There was a sound like a sigh, and when I opened them again Jule was standing there. Jule … I kept trying to see Ineh.
“She’s safe,” Jule said, and smiled. “She’s all right.”
I grunted, and let an arm drop down.
She squeezed my hand, helped me down from the platform and into the bathroom. I drank six cups of water while she peeled off my stinking clothes. Then she pushed me into the fresher and disappeared again. I stood inside until it turned my raw skin numb and tingling, until I could tell that I had legs to stand on. It felt like a long time since I’d used them.
It was a long time. The readout on the clock said three days. I pulled on a tunic and drank some more water, trying to sort out my mind.
Then Jule was back again, with food. Eating it gave me a little extra time. Finally I said, “Is she with you?”
She nodded. “With us, yes. Ardan’s treating her; she’s in bad shape physically.”
“I know. It’s all right? She doesn’t—?” I touched my head, looking at her.
Jule shook her own head. “It was her suffering that I couldn’t bear. The worst of that is past; I can protect myself from what’s left. But it will be a long time before she believes she has any control—over h
erself or her life. She’s going to need all the help we can give her; all the shared strength.”
Do any of us really control anything? But I only said, “Half a lifetime doesn’t heal in a night. Nothing’s that easy. But the worst is over, like you said. And I’ll—we’ll be here, to show her how much good she can find in…” Something in Jule’s face made me stop. But I didn’t ask. With my heart beating too quickly, I let my mind go loose, trying to feel what was wrong. And got nothing. Nothing.
“Cat? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I mean—nothing,” feeling my face collapse; feeling my mind as tight and hard as a fist. “Did you—was there anything?”
She looked at me, confused. Then, “Oh.” No.
“It didn’t last.” Didn’t last, didn’t last, didn’t.… Echoes, was that all she’d left me? (Jule, feel it, for God’s sake, feel it!)
She blinked, twitched.
I leaned forward, tilting my stool. “Did you…?”
She nodded slowly, starting to smile. “I felt something. I felt something.”
“Yeah?” I settled back; knowing I should have realized that Ineh wasn’t the only one whose healing wouldn’t finish in a night.… “At least there’s something. Hope.” A crack in the wall. A beginning, now that I’d finally accepted that guilt would only die when I did. I sighed, looking back at Jule. “What did I say wrong about helping Ineh?” Asking; just asking.
Jule stood up, turning away from me. “She doesn’t want to see you again.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t want to see you.” Her voice got weaker instead of stronger.
“Why? Why not?” I stood up, following her. “We shared—everything.”
“That’s why.” She turned to face me, finally. “She isn’t ready, she isn’t strong enough to deal with what that meant to both of you. You saw things about her that made her wish she was dead, Cat. Things she’ll be working to forget for the rest of her life.”
“But she knows things about me—” things that made me wish I was dead, “things even you don’t know. She doesn’t need to feel any shame with me. What she knows about me—”
“Is more than she can bear. Not added to her own problems. Not right now.” She frowned, not with anger, not at me.
“So she needs time, you mean. In time she’ll want to see me again.… a long time?”
She nodded.
“I see.” A long time before a Hydran could face a halfbreed who couldn’t face himself. A long time before he’d ever be able to do even that. A long time, a long cure, a lot of memories like bandages … a lot of proving I had a right to be alive. “I can’t stay here anymore.” Jule didn’t say anything. I went to the window, stared through the dark ghost trapped there in the dirty pane. “At least I’ll know she’s got you—at least she’ll have the best friends anybody could ask for, to help her through if I can’t.” I traced lines in the dust on the deep sill. Glancing down, I saw that I’d written C-A-T.
“You’ve already done the most important part, alone. You saved her sanity, Cat.”
I shook my head, wiped my name out in the dust. “You’ve got it backward. She saved mine. I thought I could handle it, I thought I could make her believe in herself. But I couldn’t. I was the one who broke. And she had to come after me and drag me out of my own death wish.”
“But you showed her she could use her talent in ways that were healing, not degrading. And then you gave her a chance to prove it. You showed her that she isn’t the only one who’s suffered … and survived.” Her voice touched me softly.
I glanced over my shoulder. “How much did you—did you—?”
She shook her head. “None of it. I couldn’t. We’re all afraid of something in our lives … of meeting the past head-on. But Ineh knows that, and I understand it, now. We’ve begun to find common ground. She showed me enough … she showed me how much you gave back to her.”
I took a long breath, leaning against the casement. I could hear Oldcity’s voice through the window: feel its reality gritty under my hands. I looked out and up, seeing nothing but walls. Somewhere up there was a garden where the sweet breath of spring moved silver crescent leaves; farther above two moons, hanging in the sky like lanterns.… “She’s got a gift, Jule. For healing, for reaching even somebody like me. She could help her people here, who’ve lost everything. Maybe she could give them back some of what they lost—not their life, but maybe their pride. Make her believe that, will you?”
“I’ll try. And so will Ardan.”
I remembered his first wife, his own common ground, and nodded. “Yeah. That’s fine. She’ll do fine.…” I turned around, to look back at the room Ineh and I had gone through hell in together: Cracked, cramped, peeling; with a couple of cheap holos of somewhere better on the walls to make it even more depressing. Only one thing in the room that was beautiful, besides Jule; one thing that was beautiful and mine—a small Hydran crystal globe sitting on the bookshelf table, that Siebeling had given to me. An image of a nightflower bush lay inside it, black petals striped with silver repeating like a starry night.
I went to it and covered it with my hand. It was warm, not cool; it always was. I closed my eyes and felt for it with all my mind, felt it tingle and stir with the psi-tuned energy I was calling.… But when I opened my eyes the nightflower was still there. Once I’d only needed to touch the warm surface and wish, to change the image inside. The nightflower had been there for most of a year, ever since Siebeling had given it to me. A promise, he’d called it. “Give this to Ineh for me. Say it’s—a promise.” I cupped the ball in my hands.
Jule came to my side, put her arm around my shoulders. Dimly I knew that she was trying to reach me. I held my mind as loose as I could … felt warmth belief hope sorrow trust love; a drop of nectar, a whisper of a poem where before there had only been the silence of the grave. Feeling what they had only been able to tell me: that they loved me, that they wanted to help me; that they were responsible for the way I was, and they would be responsible for making it right again.
“But it’s not your responsibility.” I moved away from her, gently. “It was my choice; I killed a man. I have to pay for it, I have to make it right with myself.”
“You can’t give up now, Cat, just when you’ve—”
“Jule,” I said; she stopped. “You don’t understand. You want to help me; I know that. You tried—you did help. But now I know I’m the only one who can make the trip. You can’t carry me; you don’t need to: I’m not a cripple. I can walk.” Someday I’ll run. I looked down. “And I guess it’s about time I got started.”
“You’re really going to leave here, then.” Not a question; a dim barb of dismay caught in my mind.
I nodded, not really sure of the answer until I’d made it; realizing then that I’d been certain all along. “It’s better if I do. Better for Ineh. Better for me. Better for everyone.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t deny it. I moved back to her and put my arms around her. We held each other for a while, not saying anything. Her body was warm against mine, made real by the touch of her mind. “I’m sorry.…” she said finally; but I wasn’t sure why.
I let her go at last and moved back to the window; looking out again because I had to.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Maybe it doesn’t even matter.” I shrugged. “I mean, what have I got to lose?” Up there somewhere two moons were hanging like lanterns in the sky; and beyond them were the stars.
Books by Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen Cycle
The Snow Queen
World’s End
*The Summer Queen
*Tangled Up in Blue
The Cat Novels
*Psion
*Catspaw
*Dreamfall
*Heaven Chronicles (forthcoming)
Phoenix in the Ashes (story collection)
Eyes of Amber (story collection)
The Random House Book of Greek Myths (illustrated by Oren Sherman)
*denotes a Tor book
Praise for Psion …
An American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults
“Ms. Vinge has one of the most wished-for gifts any writer can have—the ability to make the strange come wholly alive.”
—Andre Norton
… and the Cat series
“First-rate suspense … but it also is a surprisingly compassionate look at the effects of wealth and power on people. A sequel to Vinge’s Psion, it stands on its own as one of the top science fiction books of the year.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Catspaw
“A fast-paced, first-person narrative … fine, realistic science fiction writing. Vinge has created a hero who is both sensitive and sharp, a hero we can easily like.”
—The Knoxville News-Sentinel on Catspaw
“A tense, lyrical human drama in a complex future setting. Vinge has created a world that is exotic, and, more importantly, believable. Her characters come alive through masterly writing.”
—The Kingston Whig-Standard on Catspaw
“Recommended. This has become a series to collect. Vinge displays her potent imagination in the creation of a world that remains fascinating.… She also displays virtuoso quality in her delving into the emotional torments of her characters, so that one emerges at the end feeling … very satisfied.”