“I know,” I said, touching her lightly again, with hand and mind. “I understand. We do understand each other. We’re together almost as they are, as Normals can’t ever be.”
Lya nodded, and smiled, and hugged me. We went to sleep in each other’s arms.
* * *
Dreams again. But again, at dawn, the memory stole away from me. It was all very annoying. The dream had been pleasant, comfortable. I wanted it back, and I couldn’t even remember what it was. Our bedroom, washed by harsh daylight, seemed drab compared to the splendors of my lost vision.
Lya woke after me, with another headache. This time she had the pills on hand, by the bedstand. She grimaced and took one.
“It must be the Shkeen wine,” I told her. “Something about it takes a dim view of your metabolism.”
She pulled on a fresh coverall and scowled at me. “Ha. We were drinking Veltaar last night, remember? My father gave me my first glass of Veltaar when I was nine. It never gave me headaches before.”
“A first!” I said, smiling.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “It hurts.”
I quit kidding, and tried to read her. She was right. It did hurt. Her whole forehead throbbed with pain. I withdrew quickly before I caught it too.
“All right,” I said. “I’m sorry. The pills will take care of it, though. Meanwhile, we’ve got work to do.”
Lya nodded. She’d never let anything interfere with work yet.
The second day was a day of manhunt. We got off to a much earlier start, had a quick breakfast with Gourlay, then picked up our aircar outside the tower. This time we didn’t drop down when we hit Shkeentown. We wanted a human Joined, which meant we had to cover a lot of ground. The city was the biggest I’d ever seen, in area at any rate, and the thousand-odd human cultists were lost among millions of Shkeen. And, of those humans, only about half were actually Joined yet.
So we kept the aircar low, and buzzed up and down the dome-dotted hills like a floating roller-coaster, causing quite a stir in the streets below us. The Shkeen had seen aircars before, of course, but it still had some novelty value, particularly to the kids, who tried to run after us whenever we flashed by. We also panicked a whiner, causing him to upset the cart full of fruit he was dragging. I felt guilty about that, so I kept the car higher afterwards.
We spotted Joined all over the city, singing, eating, walking—and ringing those bells, those eternal bronze bells. But for the first three hours, all we found were Shkeen Joined. Lya and I took turns driving and watching. After the excitement of the previous day, the search was tedious and tiring.
Finally, however, we found something: a large group of Joined, ten of them, clustered around a bread cart behind one of the steeper hills. Two were taller than the rest.
We landed on the other side of the hill and walked around to meet them, leaving our aircar surrounded by a crowd of Shkeen children. The Joined were still eating when we arrived. Eight of them were Shkeen of various sizes and hues, Greeshka pulsing atop their skulls. The other two were human.
They wore the same long red gowns as the Shkeen, and they carried the same bells. One of them was a big man, with loose skin that hung in flaps, as if he’d lost a lot of weight recently. His hair was white and curly, his face marked by a broad smile and laugh wrinkles around the eyes. The other was a thin, dark weasel of a man with a big hooked nose.
Both of them had Greeshka sucking at their skulls. The parasite riding the weasel was barely a pimple, but the older man had a lordly specimen that dripped down beyond his shoulders and into the back of the gown.
Somehow, this time, it did look hideous.
Lyanna and I walked up to them, trying hard to smile, not reading—at least at first. They smiled at us as we approached. Then they waved.
“Hello,” the weasel said cheerily when we got there. “I’ve never seen you. Are you new on Shkea?”
That took me slightly by surprise. I’d been expecting some sort of garbled mystic greeting, or maybe no greeting at all. I was assuming that somehow the human converts would have abandoned their humanity to become mock-Shkeen. I was wrong.
“More or less,” I replied. And I read the weasel. He was genuinely pleased to see us, and just bubbled with contentment and good cheer. “We’ve been hired to talk to people like you.” I’d decided to be honest about it.
The weasel stretched his grin farther than I thought it would go. “I am Joined, and happy,” he said. “I’ll be glad to talk to you. My name is Lester Kamenz. What do you want to know, brother?”
Lya, next to me, was going tense. I decided I’d let her read in depth while I asked questions. “When did you convert to the Cult?”
“Cult?” Kamenz said.
“The Union.”
He nodded, and I was struck by the grotesque similarity of his bobbing head and that of the elderly Shkeen we’d seen yesterday. “I have always been in the Union. You are in the Union. All that thinks is in the Union.”
“Some of us weren’t told,” I said. “How about you? When did you realize you were in the Union?”
“A year ago, Old Earth time. I was admitted to the ranks of the Joined only a few weeks ago. The First Joining is a joyful time. I am joyful. Now I will walk the streets and ring my bells until the Final Union.”
“What did you do before?”
“Before?” A short vague look. “I ran machines once. I ran computers, in the Tower. But my life was empty, brother. I did not know I was in the Union, and I was alone. I had only machines, cold machines. Now I am Joined. Now I am”—again he searched—“not alone.”
I reached into him, and found the happiness still there, with love. But now there was an ache too, a vague recollection of past pain, the stink of unwelcome memories. Did these fade? Maybe the gift the Greeshka gave its victims was oblivion, sweet mindless rest and end of struggle. Maybe.
I decided to try something. “That thing on your head,” I said, sharply. “It’s a parasite. It’s drinking your blood right now, feeding on it. As it grows, it will take more and more of the things you need to live. Finally it will start to eat your tissue. Understand? It will eat you. I don’t know how painful it will be, but however it feels, at the end you’ll be dead. Unless you come back to the Tower now, and have the surgeons remove it. Or maybe you could remove it yourself. Why don’t you try? Just reach up and pull it off. Go ahead.”
I’d expected—what? Rage? Horror? Disgust? I got none of these. Kamenz just stuffed bread in his mouth and smiled at me, and all I read was his love and joy and a little pity.
“The Greeshka does not kill,” he said finally. “The Greeshka gives joy and happy Union. Only those who have no Greeshka die. They are … alone. Oh, forever alone.” Something in his mind trembled with sudden fear, but it faded quickly.
I glanced at Lya. She was stiff and hard-eyed, still reading. I looked back and began to phrase another question. But suddenly the Joined began to ring. One of the Shkeen started it off, swinging his bell up and down to produce a single sharp clang. Then his other hand swung, then the first again, then the second, then another Joined began to ring, then still another, and then they were all swinging and clanging and the noise of their bells was smashing against my ears as the joy and the love and the feel of the bells assaulted my mind once again.
I lingered to savor it. The love there was breathtaking, awesome, almost frightening in its heat and intensity, and there was so much sharing to frolic in and wonder at, such a soothing-calming-exhilarating tapestry of good feeling. Something happened to the Joined when they rang, something touched them and lifted them and gave them a glow, something strange and glorious that mere Normals could not hear in their harsh clanging music. I was no Normal, though. I could hear it.
I withdrew reluctantly, slowly. Kamenz and the other human were both ringing vigorously now, with broad smiles and glowing twinkling eyes that transfigured their faces. Lyanna was still tense, still reading. Her mouth was slightly open, and she trembled
where she stood.
I put an arm around her and waited, listening to the music, patient. Lya continued to read. Finally, after minutes, I shook her gently. She turned and studied me with hard, distant eyes. Then blinked. And her eyes widened and she came back, shaking her head and frowning.
Puzzled, I looked into her head. Strange and stranger. It was a swirling fog of emotion, a dense moving blend of more feelings than I’d care to put a name to. No sooner had I entered than I was lost, lost and uneasy. Somewhere in the fog there was a bottomless abyss lurking to engulf me. At least it felt that way.
“Lya,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head again, and looked at the Joined with a look that was equal parts fear and longing. I repeated my question.
“I—I don’t know,” she said. “Robb, let’s not talk now. Let’s go. I want time to think.”
“OK,” I said. What was going on here? I took her hand and we walked slowly around the hill to the slope where we’d left the car. Shkeen kids were climbing all over it. I chased them, laughing. Lya just stood there, her eyes gone all faraway on me. I wanted to read her again, but somehow I felt it would be an invasion of privacy.
Airborne, we streaked back toward the Tower, riding higher and faster this time. I drove, while Lya sat beside me and stared out into the distance.
“Did you get anything useful?” I asked her, trying to get her mind back on the assignment.
“Yes. No. Maybe.” Her voice sounded distracted, as if only part of her was talking to me. “I read their lives, both of them. Kamenz was a computer programmer, as he said. But he wasn’t very good. An ugly little man with an ugly little personality, no friends, no sex, no nothing. Lived by himself, avoided the Shkeen, didn’t like them at all. Didn’t even like people, really. But Gustaffson got through to him, somehow. He ignored Kamenz’ coldness, his bitter little cuts, his cruel jokes. He didn’t retaliate, you know? After a while, Kamenz came to like Gustaffson, to admire him. They were never really friends in any normal sense, but still Gustaffson was the nearest thing to a friend that Kamenz had.”
She stopped suddenly. “So he went over with Gustaffson?” I prompted, glancing at her quickly. Her eyes still wandered.
“No, not at first. He was still afraid, still scared of the Shkeen and terified of the Greeshka. But later, with Gustaffson gone, he began to realize how empty his life was. He worked all day with people who despised him and machines that didn’t care, then sat alone at night reading and watching holoshows. Not life, really. He hardly touched the people around him. Finally he went to find Gustaffson, and wound up converted. Now…”
“Now…?”
She hesitated. “He’s happy, Robb,” she said. “He really is. For the first time in his life, he’s happy. He’d never known love before. Now it fills him.”
“You got a lot,” I said.
“Yes.” Still the distracted voice, the lost eyes. “He was open, sort of. There were levels, but digging wasn’t as hard as it usually is—as if his barriers were weakening, coming down almost…”
“How about the other guy?”
She stroked the instrument panel, staring only at her hand. “Him? That was Gustaffson…”
And that, suddenly, seemed to wake her, to restore her to the Lya I knew and loved. She shook her head and looked at me, and the aimless voice became an animated torrent of words. “Robb, listen, that was Gustaffson, he’s been Joined over a year now, and he’s going on to Final Union within a week. The Greeshka has accepted him, and he wants it, you know? He really does, and—and—oh Robb, he’s dying!”
“Within a week, according to what you just said.”
“No. I mean yes, but that’s not what I mean. Final Union isn’t death, to him. He believes it, all of it, the whole religion. The Greeshka is his god, and he’s going to join it. But before, and now, he was dying. He’s got the Slow Plague, Robb. A terminal case. It’s been eating at him from inside for over fifteen years now. He got it back on Nightmare, in the swamps, when his family died. That’s no world for people, but he was there, the administrator over a research base, a short-term thing. They lived on Thor; it was only a visit, but the ship crashed. Gustaffson got all wild and tried to reach them before the end, but he grabbed a faulty pair of skinthins, and the spores got through. And they were all dead when he got there. He had an awful lot of pain, Robb. From the Slow Plague, but more from the loss. He really loved them, and it was never the same after. They gave him Shkea as a reward, kind of, to take his mind off the crash, but he still thought of it all the time. I could see the picture, Robb. It was vivid. He couldn’t forget it. The kids were inside the ship, safe behind the walls, but the life system failed and choked them to death. But his wife—oh, Robb—she took some skinthins and tried to go for help, and outside those things, those big wrigglers they have on Nightmare—?”
I swallowed hard, feeling a little sick. “The eater-worms,” I said, dully. I’d read about them, and seen holos. I could imagine the picture that Lya’d seen in Gustaffson’s memory, and it wasn’t at all pretty. I was glad I didn’t have her Talent.
“They were still—still—when Gustaffson got there. You know. He killed them all with a screechgun.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t think things like that really went on.”
“No,” Lya said. “Neither did Gustaffson. They’d been so—so happy before that, before the thing on Nightmare. He loved her, and they were really close, and his career had been almost charmed. He didn’t have to go to Nightmare, you know. He took it because it was a challenge, because nobody else could handle it. That gnaws at him, too. And he remembers all the time. He—they—” Her voice faltered. “They thought they were lucky,” she said, before falling into silence.
There was nothing to say to that. I just kept quiet and drove, thinking, feeling a blurred, watered-down version of what Gustaffson’s pain must have been like. After a while, Lya began to speak again.
“It was all there, Robb,” she said, her voice softer and slower and more thoughtful once again. “But he was at peace. He still remembered it all, and the way it had hurt, but it didn’t bother him as it had. Only now he was sorry they weren’t with him. He was sorry that they died without Final Union. Almost like the Shkeen woman, remember? The one at the Gathering? With her brother?”
“I remember,” I said.
“Like that. And his mind was open, too. More than Kamenz, much more. When he rang, the levels all vanished, and everything was right at the surface, all the love and pain and everything. His whole life, Robb. I shared his whole life with him, in an instant. And all his thoughts, too … he’s seen the caves of Union … he went down once, before he converted. I…”
More silence, settling over us and darkening the car. We were close to the end of Shkeentown. The Tower slashed the sky ahead of us, shining in the sun. And the lower domes and archways of the glittering human city were coming into view.
“Robb,” Lya said. “Land here. I have to think a while, you know? Go back without me. I want to walk among the Shkeen a little.”
I glanced at her, frowning. “Walk? It’s a long way back to the Tower, Lya.”
“I’ll be all right. Please. Just let me think a bit.”
I read her. The thought fog had returned, denser than ever, laced through with the colors of fear. “Are you sure?” I said. “You’re scared, Lyanna. Why? What’s wrong? The eater-worms are a long way off.”
She just looked at me, troubled. “Please, Robb,” she repeated.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I landed.
* * *
And I, too, thought, as I guided the aircar home. Of what Lyanna had said, and read—of Kamenz and Gustaffson. I kept my mind on the problem we’d been assigned to crack. I tried to keep it off Lya, and whatever was bothering her. That would solve itself, I thought.
Back at the Tower, I wasted no time. I went straight up to Valcarenghi’s office. He was there, alone, dictating into a machine. He shut
it off when I entered.
“Hi, Robb,” he began. “Where’s Lya?”
“Out walking. She wanted to think. I’ve been thinking, too. And I believe I’ve got your answer.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
I sat down. “We found Gustaffson this afternoon, and Lya read him. I think it’s clear why he went over. He was a broken man, inside, however much he smiled. The Greeshka gave him an end to his pain. And there was another convert with him, a Lester Kamenz. He’d been miserable, too, a pathetic lonely man with nothing to live for. Why shouldn’t he convert? Check out the other converts, and I bet you’ll find a pattern. The most lost and vulnerable, the failures, the isolated—those will be the ones that turned to Union.”
Valcarenghi nodded. “OK, I’ll buy that,” he said. “But our psychs guessed that long ago, Robb. Only it’s no answer, not really. Sure, the converts on the whole have been a messed-up crew, I won’t dispute that. But why turn to the Cult of the Union? The psychs can’t answer that. Take Gustaffson now. He was a strong man, believe me. I never knew him personally, but I knew his career. He took some rough assignments, generally for the hell of it, and beat them. He could have had the cushy jobs, but he wasn’t interested. I’ve heard about the incident on Nightmare. It’s famous, in a warped sort of way. But Phil Gustaffson wasn’t the sort of man to be beaten, even by something like that. He snapped out of it very quickly, from what Nelse tells me. He came to Shkea and really set the place in order, cleaning up the mess that Rockwood had left. He pushed through the first real trade contract we ever got, and he made the Shkeen understand what it meant, which isn’t easy.
“So here he is, this competent, talented man, who’s made a career of beating tough jobs and handling men. He’s gone through a personal nightmare, but it hasn’t destroyed him. He’s as tough as ever. And suddenly he turns to the Cult of the Union, signs up for a grotesque suicide. Why? For an end to his pain, you say? An interesting theory, but there are other ways to end pain. Gustaffson had years between Nightmare and the Greeshka. He never ran away from pain then. He didn’t turn to drink, or drugs, or any of the usual outs. He didn’t head back to Old Earth to have a psi-psych clean up his memories—and believe me, he could’ve gotten it paid for, if he’d wanted it. The colonial office would have done anything for him, after Nightmare. He went on, swallowed his pain, rebuilt. Until suddenly he converts.
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