Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Nor had Luke “seen anything” in the month since. The elusive natives with their peculiar talent came nowhere near Christmas Landing. Meanwhile, the recovery teams had gone out twice and brought back six children, all under two years old. These six, like the others recovered so far, had gone back to the outwayer farms from which they’d been stolen. Luke had started therapy with the four older ones who had not gone home. And also with Anne, who was Police Chief’s Halford’s unlikely daughter.

  Mistherd, Fire-Born, Cloud, Shadow-of-a-Dream. Or: Terry Barkley, Hal DiSilvio, Laura Simmons, Carolyn Grunewald. Terry had completely renounced his other name, a renunciation that was part of the extreme bitterness the police chief considered normal and Luke considered problematic. Hal, an exuberant eight-year-old orphan with astonishing adaptive capacity, was adjusting well to human life. Laura, eleven, said little and cried at night, although not for the parents whom she didn’t remember and who were too afraid to reclaim her. But she, too, was coming along, having attached herself to a kindly refectory cook who was teaching her to bake. It was Carolyn—Shadow-of-a-Dream—who genuinely worried Luke.

  She stood now, lovely in her nakedness that was both more innocent and more sensual than merely an unclothed human body. Every taut muscle strained toward the approaching figure. Every muscle—and what else? The shield deflected electromagnetic radiation, including brain waves, but Luke was not convinced that humans knew as much about their own brains as researchers claimed. Who, for instance, had known that what the aliens had done was even possible?

  The figure stopped. Through the shimmer of the shield Luke saw an upright, vaguely reptilian creature: lean, scaly, long-tailed, big-beaked, with two small forearms and two heavy hind legs meant for speed. Behind the beak, its face was flat, with two eyes at the front and a third on the top of its head. Once there were aerial predators on Roland, he thought, inanely. In a curious way, the ugliness of the native matched the ugliness of Christmas Landing. It came closer and whistled something: high, fluted, oddly musical.

  Carolyn gave a wordless cry and plunged forward, across the strip of bare dirt and through the shield. Without a moment’s hesitation, Anne followed.

  Alarms sounded. Police, already alerted by the barking dogs, raced belatedly down the corridor from the opposite direction. Only two men—Christmas Landing had diverted much of its constabulary to Project Recovery. By the time the cops reached the shield, which stopped radiation and dogs but not people, Luke had already reached it himself.

  Carolyn, laughing and crying, threw her arms around the scaly alien and fluted back. Anne stood transfixed, her pale eyes wide as Roland’s larger moon. Luke groaned inwardly. Anne should not have experienced this, it would make her therapy so much harder, and as for Shadow-of-a-Dream . . . Luke stepped through the barrier.

  Dizziness took him, and he fell to his knees.

  The angel was neither young nor old, male nor female. All white: wings, skin, robe. Not soft but infinitely compassionate, it held a hand out to Luke and said, “There is nothing to fear.”

  “I know,” he said, and a sob broke from him just as one of the cops seized him roughly and dragged him back behind the shield, and the Angel of Death vanished.

  “I don’t think you realize how brave it was of the alien to come here,” Luke said carefully to Police Chief Halford.

  “I don’t think you realize what a spectacle you made of yourself out there,” Halford said. Disgust rimmed her features like frost. It didn’t help that she was right. But so was Luke.

  “Consider, Chief Halford. A native, alien to us, comes to the conquerors of her people without the only protection she knows, all because she wants to assure herself that the human girl she raised is well and not being mistreated. That takes enormous courage in any species.”

  “If that’s what you assume her motive was.”

  “Shadow-of-a-Dream said it was.”

  “Carolyn is deluded—that’s the whole point of this therapy, isn’t it? If this were up to me, Dr. Silverstein, you would be on the next transport back to Portolondon. But Terry wants you to continue ‘helping’ Carolyn.”

  Luke wasn’t surprised to hear that sixteen-year-old Terry’s wishes carried so much weight. In this pioneer society, sixteen was formally an adult. Carolyn’s parents were dead; she and Terry were lovers; Chief Halford had no other real options for dealing with Carolyn. Luke also knew, without being told, that he was to continue seeing Anne as well because Anne herself wished it and she, too, was sixteen.

  He said with deliberate mildness, “I’ll see Carolyn now.”

  “Terry is with her.”

  “I don’t do therapy that way, Chief Halford.”

  “Then you won’t do it at all. He says she won’t come without him.”

  There is more than one control freak here. But he said only, “Send them both in.”

  The two youngsters held hands. Carolyn wore clothes, jeans and a loose blue shirt, although her feet were bare, the soles hard as leather from fourteen years of running barefoot in the wilderness. They were both so beautiful, Luke thought, conscious of his own wrinkled skin and bald head. He had never gone in for cosmetic enhancements. Carolyn’s long brown hair, streaked with sun-gold, fell around her shoulders. Terry’s blue eyes burned with anger.

  The first three seconds and he was already faced with a problem. She wanted to be addressed as “Shadow-of-a-Dream”; he would be furious if Luke used the name the aliens had given her—the name she had been called by for most of her life. He said, “Hello to both of you.”

  “Hello,” Terry said. The girl said nothing.

  “Terry, it’s not usual to do therapy with a third person present.”

  “We aren’t usual,” the young man said.

  “True enough.” Terry was extremely intelligent. His fury at discovering the alien deception that had ruled his life raged in him, a fire undiminished in a month of burning. He had refused all scans of his own brain. (“No one will invade my mind ever again!”) The English language that his captors had insisted all the stolen children learn or retain was soft-voweled, slightly slurred on the consonants, and this somehow made his bitterness and anger seem even more dangerous: a blaze deceptively softened by gauzy curtains that might themselves ignite.

  Luke said to the girl, “What did you see when you went beyond the shield?”

  She looked at him mutely.

  Terry said, “I know what she saw: the Queen of Air and Darkness. That’s what we were told to call her, you know. Starmother, Lady Sky, The Fairest—an ugly reptile, a liar—all lies!”

  Luke said, “Is that what you saw, Carolyn? The Queen of Air and Darkness?”

  “Of course it is!” Terry said. “Don’t you understand? Her presence is how they kept us like you keep dogs—come when they whistle, do what they order, bring more children to fair Carheddin under the mountain, lies lies lies—”

  “Terry,” Luke said, “I’d like Carolyn to answer, please. What did you see?”

  Anguish distorted the lovely face. Luke held her eyes steadily. She was torn between what she wanted to say, whatever it was, and her love for this boy, whose will was stronger than hers. A long moment passed; Luke did not relinquish her gaze. Finally she turned to Terry.

  “Mistherd—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  She looked down at her bare feet and fell silent, but obstinacy lurked in the set of her mouth. Was she strong enough to do without him? Luke said, “Carolyn, if you would prefer to talk to me alone, I’m sure Terry will understand.”

  “I won’t,” he said, at the same moment that she clutched his hand tighter and whispered, “No.”

  Not strong enough. Luke tried a different approach. “We have some new information about how the aliens cast their illusions. Dr. Cardiff’s analyses of Laura’s and Hal’s brain scans may help us deal with any future incidents, if they happen.”

  “They will,” Terry said grimly. “They’re still out there, just in a new locati
on. They won’t give Roland to us that easily.”

  Us. All his life Terry had been “Mistherd,” devoted to the Queen’s cause. You could not change sides that completely, that fast, without extreme psychological stress. Luke might well be treating the wrong patient.

  He persisted with the cooling balm of objective fact: “We’ve known for centuries that the brain projects its own electromagnetic field. It’s pretty weak, but it’s there, and in a few people it has even been put to practical use. Dowsers, for instance, can sense magnetic changes associated with the presence of a water table. Apparently the aliens highly developed an ability to manipulate each other’s much stronger fields, as a means of communication, when their science developed along biological rather than physical lines. From the first stolen children, they learned to manipulate our electromagnetic fields as well, saturating the human brain with neuropsychic forces that set up feedback loops which—”

  “What?” Terry said.

  Luke had forgotten whom he was speaking to. The boy was intelligent, but he was also illiterate. Luke sought words to explain. “There are stories that lie in all human brains. The same stories that have turned up in one form or another in every human society, on every planet, from the beginning of time. They’re called ‘archetypes.’ They involve gods, rulers, great warriors, terrible monsters, enchanted palaces, songs and feasting—all the illusions you experienced out there.”

  “All the lies,” Terry said bitterly.

  “They were not lies,” Carolyn said.

  Both men stared at her. She kept her eyes cast down, her mouth set in a stubborn line.

  “Of course they were!” Terry exploded.

  She shook her head.

  Luke said quickly, “What do you mean, Carolyn?”

  Silence. Terry started to speak and Luke raised his hand. For once, the boy subsided, his eyes on Carolyn. Just as Luke decided she was not going to answer, she raised her head.

  “They were illusions. But not lies. Because we really did experience the illusions. We saw them and heard them.” All at once she began to sing:

  “Cast a spell,

  Weave it well

  Of dust and dew

  And night and—”

  “Stop!” Terry shouted.

  “Mistherd—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  She put her hands over her face and started to cry. “Flowermother came to see if I was all right! She came in her own body and she came even though she thought humans might kill her or capture her. She came because she cares about us. And even after I went through their shield she stayed as herself. Do you understand, Mistherd? She cast no illusion in my mind!”

  The girl looked directly at Luke, all of Roland’s pagan wilderness in her eyes, and said, “You asked me what I saw. I saw the alien who raised me and loves me and came to see if I am all right. That’s why she came. And—” the girl drew a deep breath—“and my name is Shadow-of-a-Dream.”

  Later, after they had gone, the girl in tears, Luke sat alone in his office. He sat for a long time. Finally he activated the commlink and sent a message to Chief Halford.

  “I think you should put a twenty-four-hour guard on Carolyn Grunewald. She may try to go back to them.”

  Dogs were never fooled by alien illusions; evidently their brains were too different. Chief Halford was accompanied by her mastiff when she came to Luke’s office, although privately he doubted that she actually needed it. Some people’s minds seemed impervious to illusions, even the illusion of goodwill created by common courtesy.

  “You failed,” the chief said. “Carolyn is refusing to see you again, and not even Terry can persuade her.”

  “That was a risk I had to take. The greater risk was having her run.”

  “Why would she do that? Why would anybody do that? I don’t understand!”

  The plea might have moved Luke if it had been less belligerent, or if he hadn’t felt so weak. This was not one of his good days. It was so difficult pretending to not be sick, pretending to not be old. He was not moved by Chief Halford, with her small glaring eyes and self-righteous scowl, but he owed her an answer.

  “The aliens’ neuropsychic projections can create the illusion of seeing whatever archetype you most desire,” he said gently. “Why wouldn’t that tempt a person?”

  “But it’s not real!”

  “No.”

  “Then the girl is insane. Or you misdiagnosed her.”

  “I didn’t diagnose her at all. I merely alerted authorities that I thought she might run and was therefore a danger to herself. As I am legally required to do.”

  “Oh, I know, you follow all the rules, doctor.”

  He had her pegged now: a fear biter. She was like certain dogs—hopefully not the mastiff lying by her side—that attacked when afraid. Chief Halford’s fear was not for herself but for Christmas Landing, for the humans so tentatively established on Roland, and for Anne.

  The attack came next. “Why didn’t you tell me that you are dying of an inoperable brain tumor?”

  Anger rose in Luke. “Medical records are supposed to be confidential.”

  “Nothing in Christmas Landing is hidden from me!”

  She actually believed it. Luke would trace the leak later, and someone would be in deep trouble for it. Now all he said was, “Total knowledge is an illusion.”

  It went right over her head; she was not built for irony. She rose, looking down at him—to gain an advantage?—and said, “I don’t want you to see Anne anymore.”

  “That’s really up to her. As you’ve pointed out to me, sixteen is legal adulthood on Roland.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She banged the door as she left, and the mastiff growled at him.

  No, not one of the good days. And only half over.

  The chapel in Christmas Landing was dusty. No one had cleaned the tile floor or the deliberately simple stone altar, with its two unlit candles. But a fresh bouquet of firethorn and driftweed lay on the dusty stone.

  Colonists to Roland came for various reasons and, when only two or three ships from other planets might reach Roland each century, the colonists came permanently. There were the usual fortune hunters, adventurers, and scientists. Most emigrants, however, came to isolate a cherished way of life from corrupting influences. These had their own churches, temples, mosques, shrines. The small chapel, deliberately free of anyone’s symbols, was designed for the rest, those who might want a place of comfort or meditation or merely silence. Apparently few did.

  Luke stopped just inside the door. In the dim light, Shadow-of-a-Dream lay at the foot of the altar. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought that she was dead.

  Then it seemed that his heart was stopping. Dizziness took him and he clutched at his chest. This was it, then, not his brain but his heart . . . The machine eventually wears out . . .

  It was not the end. A brief vision, quickly gone, and he found himself slumped on a plain wooden bench, the girl kneeling beside him.

  “Healer, are you all right?”

  “Yes . . . I . . . ”

  “I will bring help!”

  He groped for her hand. She was naked again, save for a garland of the same flowers as lay on the altar. “No . . . no, please . . . ” He didn’t want the infirmary, the inevitable fuss and restrictions and pity. Especially not the pity.

  She said, with sudden and incongruous hardness, “You do not want anyone to know.”

  “No.” His breath came easier now.

  “You are afraid they will keep you somewhere against your will.”

  “Shadow-of-a-Dream—”

  She gave a harsh laugh, whirled around, and was gone in a flurry of firethorn petals and sixteen-year-old scorn.

  When he could breathe regularly again, he hobbled to the altar and picked up her bouquet. It smelled fresh and alive.

  Anne sat across from him, slouched in an old padded chair. In one sense, Luke thought frivolously, the problem was aesthetic. Both Terry and Carol
yn—Mistherd and Shadow-of-a-Dream—had looked wrong in this bare, ugly room that was temporarily his office. Their former lives were evident in every movement of their lithe bodies, in every glance from their forest-sharpened eyes. Even when she was dressed, Shadow-of-a-Dream wore the wilderness. Whereas poor Anne Halford looked like she belonged here.

  And yet, she did not think she did. The same archetypical visions that Terry raged against, that Shadow-of-a-Dream longed for, existed deep in Anne’s brain.

  “I saw a fairy,” Anne said, “but tall, maybe seven feet. Dressed in robes of starlight and petals of flowers. Light danced all around her, but shadows did, too. I saw the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

  “You saw an illusion,” Luke said.

  “I know that, doctor.”

  But she didn’t want to know it. He said gently, “You would have liked it to be real.”

  “Yes, of course. Wouldn’t we all?”

  No. He waited. She had something to say and she was going to say it. His head hurt, and the dizziness came more frequently now. But he forced himself to concentrate; they had reached that critical point in therapy where the patient was ready to open up. There would be a rush, maybe an explosion, of words and feelings. But when words came, Luke was nonetheless surprised at how Anne began.

  “My mother goes to church.”

  Anger in the young eyes, bitter from a lifetime of being considered a disappointment to her overbearing mother.

  “I didn’t know that,” Luke said. Another surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. People were always more complicated than they appeared, with hidden corners that led only to more shadowy passages. Even Police Chief Halford.