Dreamer

by Steven Harper

  “Sejal!” Vidya barked. “Take cover!”

  But one of the bright beams caught Sejal’s shoulder. He screamed once and dropped. Every guard in the room cried out in unison and collapsed in an eerie parody of Sejal. The last two children continued smiling on the beds.

  Kendi flopped and writhed on the ground. Blackness surrounded him, thick and impenetrable. His talons curled with cold. He could feel the heat being leached from him like water being sucked from a glass. How many voices were in the blackness? He couldn’t tell. Twice he had tried to leave the Dream, but the pain was too great for the necessary concentration.

  “Why are you doing this?” he choked.

  Concepts flooded Kendi’s mind. anger HUNGER reach expand ANGER lonely

  Kendi tried to rise, but the energy simply wasn’t there. “You’re lonely?”

  lonely HUNGER ANGER lonely

  “Come join the rest of us,” Kendi replied. The response seemed to puzzle the darkness. Kendi rallied. “I meant we’re all lonely.”

  MOTHER

  The single concept knocked Kendi flat in its despair. A small part of Kendi’s mind wondered what a trained psychologist would think of it. He shivered in the biting, horrible cold.

  “I miss my mother,” Kendi called out. His voice sounded thin and weak. “And I miss Ara. So does Ben. I—we—know what it’s like.”

  The darkness hovered about him as if considering the idea. The icy heaviness lifted just slightly, as if it were pulling back from the Dream. A flicker of hope flared. Perhaps—

  HUNGRY

  There was no sympathy or empathy in the voice. Kendi, lying crushed beneath its icy weight, gave himself up to the ancestors and took his final breath.

  “We surrender!” Vidya shouted, and threw her pistol toward the ruined door. It clattered on the tiles. Katsu did the same. Vidya shot a glance at Sejal, who had only been slightly stunned and was already recovering.

  The result of Vidya’s words was predictable. The table was shoved out of the way and a dozen more guard boiled into the room, crowding the room with warm bodies and flushed faces that sweated with fear and stress. Vidya and Katsu were swiftly handcuffed and the cattle prod was torn from her belt. The polymer bands bit deeply into Vidya’s wrists, but she didn’t cry out. Prasad, still dazed, was yanked to his feet and cuffed as well. Vidya watched placidly as three guard converged on Sejal, who bore a small burn on one shoulder. His strange pale eyes bore into them. At once, every guard in the room went rigid.

  “Quickly!” Vidya said. “The last two!”

  Four guard moved to the final pair of beds. Other guards released Vidya’s, Katsu’s, and Prasad’s handcuffs. Vidya rubbed her wrists with relief. One more child went into the cryo-unit. The pair working on the final child had disconnected him and were sliding him toward the final cryo-unit when utter despair crashed over Vidya in a sickening tidal wave. Her legs went rubbery and she slid to the floor. Every other person in the room, including Sejal, Prasad, and Katsu, did the same, but Vidya barely noticed. Nothing she did was worth anything. She was alone in the universe. Prasad had abandoned her, stealing away her daughter and leaving her to raise a son who had turned into a prostitute. The neighborhood she had worked body and soul to build and protect had failed, and the people who lived there surely snickered at her and called her names behind her back.

  One of the guard started to weep hoarse, dry sobs. So did several of the others. The first one, a handsome, dark-haired man who looked barely eighteen, picked up his pistol, put it in his mouth, and fired. His head vanished in a snapping cloud of electric blood. Vidya couldn’t work up the energy to care. Part of her was aware of the fact that the final child was still active in the Dream, that it was feeding on the minds on Rust. She still didn’t care.

  Another guard, this one not sobbing, got up and wandered aimlessly about the room. He was a short, slender man with brown hair and a flat nose. His face was devoid of any emotion, of any sense that other people had feelings. After a moment, he slid a knife from his belt, crouched over one of his sobbing compatriots, and deliberately drew the blade across the other man’s throat. Crimson liquid spouted into the air. The man’s sobs dissolved into gurgling noises. The flat-nosed guard stared at the glittering blade with a flicker of interest before moving purposefully toward Katsu. She looked up at him with dull eyes. Blood dripped from the knife. And still Vidya couldn’t bring herself to care. She had only known Katsu for a few weeks. It wasn’t as if Katsu were much of a daughter to her.

  And then the bleak miasma lifted for a moment, as if something had hesitated or drawn back from her mind. For some reason, the image of a falcon holding back darkness popped into her head. A spurt of adrenaline shot through Vidya’s arteries and cut through the fog pressing down on her mind.

  Vidya got to her feet. The despairing apathy had lifted enough to let her act, but she still felt as if a weight were pressing her down. She pulled herself upright using a cryo-unit for support. The flat-nosed guard reached down and grabbed the front of Katsu’s shirt. Katsu made a small sound as he raised the knife. Vidya’s fumbling fingers found one of the many pistols dropped by the guard. Katsu’s shirt tore as Vidya raised her heavy hand and fired.

  She missed. Energy cracked through the air and made an uneven black spot on the wall. The flat-nosed guard dropped Katsu and twisted around to face Vidya. He lunged across the room. Vidya fired again, and he dropped in his tracks to lay twitching on the floor.

  Vidya turned to face the final child lying on his bed next to the open cryo-unit. The smile still lay on his distorted lips. All at once the sense of uncaring smashed back into her. Vidya wondered how she could ever have seen the twisted monstrosity as a person, as a human being worth saving. It was the cause of all the problems around her, and its self-satisfied smirk only made her angrier. It was a thing, an experiment gone wrong. Vidya raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

  Then she jerked her hand. The shot went wide. A light fixture exploded, sending down a shower of white sparks. No. This thing would not make her a murderer, no matter how angry or uncaring she became.

  Vidya bolted forward and grabbed the child by shoulder and hip. She shoved him, rolling him roughly into the cryo-unit. The slid slammed shut and the viewplate fogged over.

  Instantly, the weight lifted. The despair and anger she felt melted away into something she could handle. She pushed herself erect against a bed still warm from the child that had occupied it. Around her, the guard stirred. Two were dead, and the room smelled of coppery blood and pungent bowel. Prasad came slowly to his feet and Katsu stood up as well. Sejal sat down on one of the beds. A guard blinked.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  And then a shuddering boom shook the lab.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE DREAM

  We came to you in a dream,

  But you were not there.

  —Ched-Galar, Silent Poetry

  Kendi huddled on the flat gray ground. One of his wings was broken, and he was so cold he had stopped shivering. He lay there bleakly, waiting to die. The Dream was absolutely quiet. Not a sound disturbed the air.

  And then, like the first hesitant birds calling after the storm has a passed, a whisper drifted by. It was followed by another, and another. They slowly swelled into a full chorus, but it somehow different from the one Kendi had been hearing for so many years.

  Dull pain throbbed in Kendi’s wing and he couldn’t find the energy to raise his head. The darkness was gone, but he could still feel the life seeping slowly from him. It wouldn’t take him long to die now, and he just wished it would happen quickly. He closed his eyes.

  Another strange whisper. Kendi felt something nudge him. He ignored it. Another nudge. Grudgingly Kendi opened his eyes. Astonishment widened them. People had encircled him. Men and women, all naked, their brown skins drawn smoothly over taut muscle. They had brown eyes and brown or black hair that flared outward in ropy kinks. They were all smiling.

 
You did well, Kendi, they said as one. The sound of their thoughts wrapped Kendi in kind warmth and a glorious sense of belonging, a feeling he barely remembered from childhood. Their presence gave him strength, and he struggled to his feet. The pain of his broken wing faded. He was whole again. These were the Real People.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said, and they smiled their acknowledgment. “What’s happened to the Dream?”

  It has changed, they said. The minds of most mutants are weak, even among those who are Silent. This statement was made without rancor or judgement. It was a simple fact, one that a parent might make about a child who had much potential but many lessons to learn. They were unable to deal with such an abrupt merging and an equally abrupt release. A great many of them will never touch the Dream again. The few who can reach it will find their abilities severely curtailed.

  “Including me?” Kendi asked.

  You were trained by mutants, they said kindly. You will have to overcome that. There is still much for you to learn, Kendi Weaver.

  The Real People were fading into transparency. Kendi felt their minds drifting away.

  “Is my family still alive?” he asked frantically. “Can I find them?”

  You have to look, they said. Start by returning to Rust. And then they were gone.

  Kendi stared at the empty plain for a long time. Then he summoned his concentration.

  If it is in my best interest and in the best interest of all life everywhere, let me leave the Dream.

  Another boom rocked the Nursery. Alarms hooted, red lights flashed.

  “What’s going on?” Prasad yelled above the noise.

  All at once it came to Vidya. “The warship on the surface,” she shouted back. “It is dropping depth charges.”

  Sejal grabbed one of the guard. “Tell them to stop!” he yelled.

  “I can’t,” the guard replied, eyes wide with fright. “The Lieutenant was supposed to report in every ten minutes. If he doesn’t, the Captain will assume we’ve been killed and destroy the installation from above.”

  Vidya yanked on the man’s arm. He was a brawny man, with close-cropped hair and fearful green eyes. His name tag read Jeren.

  “Why can’t you tell them to stop?” she cried.

  “That electric shock you used shorted out both comms.”

  “What about your submersile?” Sejal screamed.

  “They’d have hit that first thing to make sure the enemy couldn’t capture and use it,” Jeren snapped.

  Vidya’s heart raced. They were at least twenty or thirty meters below the surface. No way to swim for it, not exhausted, bruised, and injured as they were. Another explosion rocked the floor.

  “Attention! Attention!” boomed the computer. “Water breach in living sector A. Emergency doors will close in five seconds. Water breach in living sector A. Emergency doors will close in three seconds.”

  “The base has a submersile,” Prasad shouted. “Come on! We have to get everyone aboard!”

  “What about about the children?” Sejal said, waving at the cyro-units.

  “Leave them!” Prasad replied. “We can’t transport them now.”

  He strode for the door, but Jeren snagged him by the arm as he went past. “You’re a prisoner!”

  “If you want to live,” Prasad retorted, “you had better come with us.” He turned to the other guard in various poses on the floor or on their knees. “That goes for all of you as well. We will not wait for you.”

  Without looking back, Prasad ran from the Nursery. Vidya, Sejal, Katsu, and some of the guard followed. Several others, including Lieutenant Arsula, were either unconscious or too stunned to move. Their compatriots started lifting them firefighter style. Vidya ignored them. If they could follow, fine. She refused to risk her own life rescuing people who had tried to kill her.

  Out in the main lab, Prasad came to a halt and, behind him, Vidya swore. They had completely forgotten about Kri, Say, Garinn, and the slaves. The guard had not taken the time to untape them. Say had apparently regained consciousness, for she was struggling against her bonds. Kri, Garinn, and the slaves pleaded with their eyes. Vidya considered leaving them, but only briefly. All of this might be easily blamed on Kri and Say, but the slaves, at least, were innocent. Katsu was already running over to them. The alarms continued to blare.

  “No time for them!” Jeren cried. Vidya’s only reply was to snatch the knife from his belt and cut the first slave free. The lab rocked under another explosion, and water cascaded almost gently down one of the hallways into the main lab. Prasad and Sejal also set to work on the captives. Most of the guard, including Jeren, looked like they wanted to leave, but they didn’t know how to get to the submersile.

  It only took a few moments to cut the slaves free, but they were already ankle-deep in warm seawater. Katsu started to work on Garinn, but Vidya stopped her.

  “No time,” she shouted.

  “We need him to operate the submersile,” Katsu shouted back without pausing in her work. “You may as well cut Kri and Say free as well.”

  Swearing, Vidya did so, taking a malicious glee in ripping the tape painfully off Say’s face.

  “If you do anything stupid, I will kill you without hesitation,” Vidya warned, hauling her roughly to her feet. Say’s hair was disheveled, her face pale.

  “What about the experiment?” she demanded.

  “They’re in cryo-sleep,” Vidya told her.

  “We can’t leave them behind!” Say cried. “We can’t!”

  Katsu slashed the last of Garinn’s tape just as Sejal finished with Kri. They got unsteadily to their feet.

  “Stay with them, then,” Vidya retorted. “We are leaving.”

  Say looked torn as the group sloshed their way out of the lab with Prasad in the lead. After several moment, Say sprinted after them.

  The water deepened as they ran, a group of over thirty. All emergency doors had automatically slammed shut, and they had to spend precious moments cranking them open manually. People stumbled beneath another explosion, and once they opened a door on a wall of water. The released torrent swept half of them off their feet before Prasad and Sejal could get the door shut again. Prasad then hurried them down a side corridor. They couldn’t have traveled more than the length of a good-sized house, but it seemed to take forever. Say kept looking back over her shoulder. The hallways were a nightmare of noise and light and panicked bodies, and Vidya was sure any moment the ceiling would open up. She suspected that the only reason they hadn’t was because the rock used to camouflage the base provided additional protection from the depth charges.

  At last they reached the submersile airlock. Garinn shoved his way to the controls. The submersile was a series of clear polymer and plastic bubbles. One large bubble formed a center ringed by six smaller bubbles. By a miracle it appeared undamaged. The group crowded in, body pressed against body, the need for survival overriding any sense of status or propriety. The submersile wasn’t designed for so many passengers and Vidya hoped the engines were up to the challenge.

  Dr. Say was the last one at the airlock. To Vidya’s horror, she pulled a guard pistol from the pocket of her lab coat and pointed straight at Vidya. Her eyes were wild. The guard tensed, but most of them had lost their pistols, and those who had them couldn’t get to them in the press of bodies.

  “We aren’t leaving without the experiment!” Say said over the alarms.

  The sub shuddered. “That one was close,” Garinn shouted. “They’re starting to send the charges this way.”

  “Get off the sub,” Say screeched. “You have to get off to make room for the experiment!”

  “Sejal!” Vidya cried.

  “I can’t see her from back here!” Sejal yelled.

  “Move,” Say ordered, “or I’ll start—”

  Vidya screamed and pointed over Say’s shoulder. Say turned, and Vidya’s foot lashed out. Say’s pistol went spinning away.

  “Get inside now!” Vidya ordered. “This is yo
ur last chance, woman!”

  The look on Say’s face reminded Vidya of a cornered animal. She stood in the airlock for a moment longer, then turned and ran down the corridor. Vidya slammed the airlock shut. The installation’s alarms were instantly muted.

  “Go!” she snapped.

  Garinn released the clamps and went. The submersile lurched sluggishly. Vidya stood with her back pressed against the airlock door. Already the air was humid and close. Vidya noticed several of the passengers, including the guard, were panting.

  “We need to breathe slowly and evenly,” she announced in a voice much calmer than she felt. “Hyperventilating will use up more oxygen than the filters can provide. Breathe with me now. In…out…”

  She kept up the exercise, using the same voice she used at meetings when she had to persuade people to do what was right for the neighborhood. At her urging, they stayed focused on their breathing and had less time to think about the dangers outside. Garinn sweated over the controls in the bubble that made up the submersile’s bridge. After a while, Vidya noticed that although the explosions continued, they had less force behind them.

  “I think we’re clear,” Garinn announced at last.

  A ragged cheer went up and Vidya allowed herself to slump against the wall.

  Dr. Jillias Say splashed and waded back toward the Nursery through water warm and salty as blood. Power had failed in this section, and the emergency lights provided only dim illumination. The alarms had cut out as well, leaving her breathing and sloshing as the only sounds.

  There had to be a way to save the experiment. There had to be. She could find a solution if she just looked hard enough.

  And then it came to her. The experiment could save her. All she had to do was bring one or two subjects out of cryo-sleep. Once they were awake and back in the Dream, they would fill everyone with despair again, including the sailors on the battleship. Once that happened, the crew would stop firing on the base, giving her time to work out the next step. Certainly the subjects would exclude her from whatever it was they did if she was the one who took them out of the cryo-units.