Dreamer

by Steven Harper

  “Especially when it is set to full power.” Vidya’s hand was steady. “I will activate this whip in ten seconds. Nine…eight…seven…”

  She means it, Trish warned. I’d get the hell out if I were you.

  With a wordless glance at Kendi, Ara rose and strode for the door. Kendi followed. Neither of them spoke until they had left the building and cleared the guard at the gate. People passed them on the street without a second glance.

  “What was that all about?” Kendi burst out when they were a safe distance away.

  “I don’t know,” Ara said, puzzled. In all the years she had been recruiting for the Children of Irfan, no one had ever reacted quite like Vidya. Most people were overjoyed to earn the attention of the Children. It meant a guaranteed career, even a certain amount of wealth. And for slaves it meant freedom. Vidya’s response made no sense.

  “So what do we do?” Kendi asked. They were standing in the shadow of a crumbling building not far from the neighborhood wall. Cars buzzed up the street, leaving whiffs of ozone in their wake.

  Ara thought a moment. “I want you to find Sejal when he goes out, see if you can catch him alone.”

  “Find him how? I’ll bet you a hundred kesh that Sejal’s going to change his clothes and that bug Gretchen planted will be worthless.”

  “You know what part of the market he hangs out in,” Ara replied. “Like you said, Sejal knows you, and if he feels he owes you, you may have better luck.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to have lunch with an old friend.”

  The restaurant was cheap and low-key, with food Ara had learned to tolerate, if not enjoy. Ara would have preferred to meet somewhere more upscale, but she had been forced to admit that such would have drawn unwanted attention to herself and to Chin Fen.

  The menu scrolled across the table and Ara tapped what she wanted—plankton stew, fishtail salad (“fishtail” being a variety of Rustic kelp), and algae bread. Then she checked the calendar. Rust kept a ten day week, and today was the third day. By now, Ara had shared enough lunches with Fen to know his food choices never varied from week to week. Ara tapped in his order—brown rice, peat shrimp, and a salad made of seapad pulp. According to Fen, the calm, tranquil seas of Rust gave rise to plants with huge red leaves that floated on the surface and covered several square kilometers. Seapads were sturdy enough to walk on, and the pulp from their leaves was a major food source for the Rustics. The leaves and the rich plankton filling the seas around them were red, giving Rust its name.

  Fen had also hinted broadly that he might like to take a walk with her across a seapad some time. Ara had fallen back on playing stupid, pretending to miss the implied invitation.

  “Glory,” Chin Fen said, cheerfully sliding into what he termed “their” booth. “Did you order yet?”

  “For both of us,” Ara said. “Glory.”

  “Thanks. Did you get your friend out of jail?”

  Oops. Ara had forgotten to update Fen. “Yes. I’m sorry—in all the stress and excitement, I forgot to let you know.”

  “I understand. No problem.”

  It was a problem, Ara could see it in his dark brown eyes. “I really am sorry, Fen. It’s been so hectic. That’s a weak excuse, I know. We couldn’t have gotten him out without your help. I really owe you.”

  “I’m not angry, Ara,” Fen said. “Really. How could I get angry at you?”

  Ara suppressed the desire to compress her lips. Fen was nice, but for all his aged appearance, he still reminded her of a young puppy—eager to please, frightened of alienating anyone, unable to deliver even a justified rebuke. It was a personality that annoyed her. She was also growing more and more certain that Fen was entertaining romantic ideas, but Ara had never been attracted to the short, spineless type.

  “Well, I’m still paying for lunch,” she said.

  “You always pay for lunch,” Fen said. “I mean, I think that maybe I should—”

  Ara waved a hand to cut him off. “I need every tax deduction I can get. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Sure, fine.” Fen swirled his water glass, leaving a glistening trail of condensation on the tabletop. “So how did your friend do? In prison, I mean.”

  “It wasn’t pleasant for him,” Ara said, “but he won’t talk about it.”

  A server brought their order, temporarily halting their talk. Once the food was tasted and proclaimed acceptable, Ara managed to steer further conversation away from Kendi and keep it light and meaningless, laughing at any even vaguely witty remark Fen made. She drew the line, however, at batting her eyelashes. When the timing felt right, Ara dropped her little bombshell.

  “I need another favor,” she said.

  Fen cocked an eyebrow, and Ara supposed he meant to look archly seductive. She sighed internally and wished Pitr or Trish could slip into his mind from the Dream and dampen his attraction to her. Fen, however, was Silent, if only half-trained, and would notice even subtle tampering.

  “I need information on a woman named Vidya Dasa,” she said. “I’ve looked in the nets and can’t find anything on her but an address and the name of her son. Can you dig deeper?”

  “I suppose,” Fen said. He pulled a computer pad from his shirt pocket. “What’s the son’s name?”

  Ara gave it, along with Vidya’s address. “Thanks, Fen. Anything you can get will be a big help. It’s worth a dozen lunches and a big box of chocolate.”

  “I don’t do this for the paybacks, Ara.” His fingers edged toward her side of the table. Ara picked up her fork and took a salty bite of plankton so he wouldn’t try to take her hand. The motion seemed to effectively spoil the moment for Fen and he reached for his water glass instead.

  “What do you need to know for?” he said.

  Ara leaned forward conspiratorially. “It’s a secret. I can’t tell you right now, but I promise I’ll explain later.”

  Gretchen would have rolled her eyes at the melodrama. Kendi would have made a smart remark. But Fen merely nodded pliantly. Ara began to understand why he had never been promoted.

  The rest of the lunch passed without incident. Pleading a business meeting, Ara paid the bill and left before Fen could ask her to dinner. Lunch was business-like. Dinner had romantic implications Ara would rather avoid.

  “Mother Ara,” came Jack Jameson’s voice over her earpiece, “I need you back at the ship for a minute. The buyer I’ve been negotiating with has agreed to a price on the dark chocolate and we need you for the finalizations.”

  “On my way,” she subvocalized, flagging down a cab. It seemed like she was always involved in commerce of some kind or other. If she wasn’t dealing in information or humans, it was chocolate.

  Ara had to admit she preferred the chocolate.

  Kendi sucked up the last sweet noodle and thrust the bowl back at the vendor. “Again.”

  The food seller gave him a wary look. “That was your third one,” he said. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough. Just fill the bowl.”

  “If you throw up, do it somewhere else,” the seller warned. But he filled the bowl.

  Kendi slurped up the sweet, floppy confection. Still more sugar rushed into his system and he was starting to feel like a hummingbird on caffeine, but he didn’t care. He had started lunch with three sticks of beef shishkebob and followed them with grilled hot peppers, a plate of tangy red kelp, and two cups of plankton-in-broth. His stomach was aching and bloated, but he ignored it. He also ignored the little internal voices that told him he wasn’t acting a proper member of the Real People, who practiced balance and moderation in all things.

  We knew of the Dream long before Irfan Qasad and her ilk, they said, and we knew of it because we lived in balance.

  Kendi stared down at the bowl, then left it on the noodle seller’s counter and walked away. The sounds and smells of the market rushed around him like a dirty wind. Sejal was not his nephew. Utan
g was not on Rust, had never been on Rust. He had failed to find his family again, Ben remained distant, and Ara was still keeping him in the dark about something. Kendi wandered through the market, sugar singing through his veins, rebukes of his ancestors ringing through his head. What could happen next?

  Naturally at that moment his implant flashed and outlined Sejal ahead of him in the crowd. Like Kendi, Sejal was wandering through the market, hands thrust into his ragged pockets. This time, however, no excitement thrilled through Kendi. Sejal was an intellectual exercise now, a puzzle to solve. Some instinct told Kendi to hang back and watch instead of approaching Sejal directly. Obeying it, Kendi faded back and followed.

  “Post Script,” Kendi subvocalized. “Are you there?”

  “Communications are currently unmonitored,” answered Peggy-Sue. “Do you wish to alert someone or leave a message?”

  “No. End communication.”

  Kendi continued shadowing Sejal. This time, however, he paid less attention to where Sejal was going and more attention to how Sejal interacted with his environment. The boy earned admiring glances from several people and a look of open greed as he passed the stall of Mr. M, the man who had the long row of slaves in his basement. There was no denying Sejal was handsome, with those blue eyes that contrasted so sharply with his black hair and brown skin. His clothes were a bit small for him, and they showed off a well-shaped body that would continue to develop as Sejal drew closer to adulthood. If Sejal was aware of his looks, however, his walk didn’t show it. He stayed hunched into himself, ignoring everything around him. Kendi slid through the crowd of shoppers. Sejal paused at a corner, then took up a position against one wall. Kendi moved out of the people stream to observe him.

  Sejal underwent a minor transformation at the corner. He stood straighter and a look of cool indifference dropped onto his face. A slight smile stole across his lips, and he hooked a thumb in his pocket. Kendi furrowed his brow and halted between two stalls. What did Sejal do on the corner all day? And what had the goons in the alley been after him for? Wasn’t Sejal afraid they’d come back?

  Most of the passers-by ignored Sejal, as he ignored them. But finally a man who looked to be in his late forties approached Sejal. They conversed at length, and Kendi’s heavy stomach tightened. This was how the encounter in the alley got its start. This time, however, Kendi didn’t see any heavies moving in.

  Sejal and the man walked up the street together and Kendi followed, more curious than ever. Eventually the pair entered a seedy building Kendi recognized as a cheap hotel. Kendi, in fact, had brought rent boys here to establish underworld “credentials,” and the place rented rooms by the hour for those who were so inclined.

  The implications for Sejal’s presence there were obvious.

  “He can’t,” Kendi whispered. But even as he said it, he knew Sejal could. It explained the too-small clothes and the time spent posturing at the corner. The alley goons must have been representatives from the local houses wanting to “discipline” a freelancer who was moving in on their territory. Kendi stared at the hotel in shock, wondering how he could have missed something so obvious. Why hadn’t Ara told him? He couldn’t imagine she didn’t know. Maybe she’d figured Kendi already knew about it or had forgotten to mention it after his arrest. A lot had happened and it may have slipped her mind.

  Abruptly Kendi’s gorge rose, and he barely managed to make it to an open sewer grating before the contents of his stomach came up. The crowd made a hole around him but kept on with business.

  After the nausea passed, Kendi hauled himself to his feet and managed to stagger to a spot on the sidewalk where he could watch the hotel. He still felt a little sick. He also felt a great deal of outrage.

  Balance, he thought. Balance and moderation. Anger will not help here.

  And why was he so angry? What was it to Kendi? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen this sort of thing before. He had paid for rent boys himself.

  Yes, but they had been adults, consenting and willing. And they had been before Kendi’s arrest and his sentence to time in the Unity—

  Kendi pushed the thoughts away. According to the Unity records Ben had conjured up, Sejal was sixteen, old enough to be considered an adult on many worlds. The man had not forced Sejal into the hotel, and Sejal was, presumably, being paid.

  Still, it bothered him. He sat on the sidewalk and fidgeted. He was considering seeing if a nearby stall owner would sell him something to take the sour vomit taste out of his mouth when Sejal’s client emerged from the hotel. Kendi blinked and checked the time on his ocular implant. Only thirteen minutes had passed.

  That was fast, he thought. Most people want to take their time with—

  Kendi’s stomach abruptly tightened. What if the man was one of those sick monsters who got his erotic kicks out of strangling or stabbing people? What if Sejal was lying dead or injured in that hotel room?

  Kendi was scrambling to his feet when Sejal emerged from the hotel. As Kendi watched, Sejal took up his customary position on a nearby corner. Within moments, a woman approached and they went into the hotel together.

  Business is good today, Kendi thought, suddenly cynical.

  The woman left twenty minutes later with Sejal exiting a few minutes behind her. Sejal went back to the corner and, ten minutes after that, went back inside with another woman.

  Okay, this is weird, Kendi thought, curiosity piqued despite his other emotions. What’s his game?

  Six men and three woman in Unity guard uniforms pushed their way through the market crowd and stormed toward the hotel. Kendi bolted upright. It was a raid.

  “Mother, a call’s coming in for you,” said Ben’s voice over the intercom. “It’s Chin Fen.”

  Ara sighed and tapped the console in her quarters. “Thanks, Ben. Patch him through.”

  A moment later, Fen’s wrinkled face appeared on the console screen. His expression showed suppressed glee. They exchanged greetings, and Ara was a bit surprised when Fen got straight to the point.

  “I did some checking on Vidya and Sejal Dasa,” Fen told her. “And I thought you might like to know what I found.”

  “Definitely,” Ara replied. “What’d you dig up?”

  Fen briskly cleared his throat. His manner was no longer that of a lovelorn puppy. He had instead become an efficient colleague. Ara wondered briefly if he had realized that she didn’t find obsequiousness attractive and was now going for professionalism.

  “Vidya Dasa doesn’t exist much of anywhere,” Fen said. “The earliest record I could find of her goes back only sixteen years ago, when she moved into her current apartment. She registered a birth certificate for one Sejal Dasa. That’s pretty much it—no tax forms, no employment listings, not even a shopping excursion. I only found a few sporadic mentionings of her in other people’s records—mostly her son’s—but no real information on her. She’s lived at her current address for sixteen years, she pays her rent on time, and that’s it.”

  “Doesn’t she pay access charges for the network?” Ara asked. “What about utility bills?”

  Fen shook his head. “Network and utilities are part of her rent. If she logs onto the nets, she does it with a pseudonym that I haven’t been able to track. I’d say she’s going out of her way to make herself as invisible as possible. And there’s more.”

  “What?”

  “I said there isn’t a record for her that goes back further than sixteen years. This isn’t too unusual. The Unity annexed Rust twenty-odd years ago, and a fair number of records were partially wiped or destroyed during the…transition.”

  Nice way to put it, Ara thought sarcastically.

  “However, Vidya is an unusual name, so I ran it. Twenty-eight women, counting your Vidya, are or have been registered on Rust with that name. All but five have continual records that go back before the Unity Annexation. One of those five is listed as no longer living on Rust. Two of the five are listed as dying several years after Vidya Dasa’s earliest record, so the
y aren’t her unless your Vidya kept up a double life. One more of the five Vidyas was sold into slavery and her current owner is still paying taxes on her. The fifth one—Vidya Vajhur—disappears from all records about seven months before Vidya Dasa pops up.” Fen leaned forward. “It looks like Vidya Vajhur decided to disappear and become Vidya Dasa. She kept her original first name, I think, in case she ran into someone who knew her. It’s easy to explain a change of last name, but a change of first name is more awkward.”

  Ara flashed back to the time she ran across Chin Fen in the registry office and the relief she felt that Ben hadn’t changed her first name for her forged Unity paperwork. For a dreadful moment she thought Fen was on to her, but she quickly discarded the idea. If Fen knew she was a spy, he would have reported her by now.

  “I can see that,” Ara said aloud. “Do you know why she changed her name, if that’s what she did?”

  Fen hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said, reluctant to admit that he had failed on this point. “But I can tell you more about Vidya Vajhur. She’s a lot more interesting than Vidya Dasa.”

  He paused, and Ara, restraining her impatience, gestured for him to continue.

  “It’s going to cost you,” Fen said slyly.

  Alarm bells went off in Ara’s head, but she kept her face calm. “Fen,” she said carefully, “I’m doing all right, but I’m not rich. I can probably come up with—”

  “Not money,” Fen interrupted. “Time.”

  “Time?”

  “On a seapad leaf.” Fen grinned mischievously. “I’ll tell you what I found if you agree to one walk at sunset on a seapad leaf. Deal?”

  Ara tapped her feet on the floor. She hadn’t expected this, not from Chin Fen. Did he have a backbone after all? Ara thought a moment. Fen was trying to order her around, and that really rankled. She didn’t really need Fen’s information at this point, now that she had what was probably Vidya’s real name. Ben could probably learn more than Fen had. On the other hand, using Fen to search didn’t carry a prison sentence, and it really wouldn’t do to waste what had turned out to be an excellent contact within Rust’s bureaucracy.