Dreamer se-2

by Steven Harper

  The last two weeks had been filled with anxiety. When Kendi had failed to check in, Ara had waited twelve tense hours before initiating a search. Trish and Pitr tried scouring the Dream for his presence on Rust, but an active search through the Dream for Kendi’s real-world mind and body ran the risk of alerting Unity Silent to their presence-a bad idea for a group of undercover monks trying to snatch up a Unity citizen-and the need for stealth hindered their movements. In the end, Ben and his hacking skills had met with success. Even so, it had taken ten days to locate Kendi in jail and six more to negotiate the Unity’s bureaucracy and arrange to pay Kendi’s fines. Chin Fen and the connections he had made over the years had been a great help, Ara had to admit, and she had lied her way through several lunches with him. Now Kendi sat before her, bruised and beaten. His hand was cold in hers.

  They sat like that for a long time, wordless, teacher and student, until the door finally ground upward.

  “Let’s go,” boomed the guard.

  Kendi got up and shuffled toward the door, head down. Ara followed, gritting her teeth and trying not to glare at the guard.

  Don’t get anyone angry, she told herself. You’re getting what you want. That’s all that counts.

  They made their way through the chilly prison. The corridor was windowless and only dimly lit by heavily-shielded bulbs in the ceiling. Ara kept her eyes resolutely ahead. She refused to glance at the tiny cells crammed with people or acknowledge the heavy smell of poor sanitation of men, women, and children all thrown in together. There was nothing she could do for these people. There was no point in looking at them. But she couldn’t block out the heart-rending sounds they made, the pleading cries that filtered between the bars.

  Another door lead them out of the prison area and into the office area, a huge open place filled with regimented rows of gray metal desks. A constant rumble of voices, clattering keys, and metallic-voiced computers pervaded the background, and the air smelled of disinfectant and body odor.

  At one of the desks, Ara thumbed more paperwork and listened grimly as an official informed them that as a convicted criminal, Kendi would be assigned a spot on a work detail list for the Unity as part of his sentence. Two hundred kesh ensured that Kendi’s name would be mysteriously absent from the work list.

  At last they reached the main desk. Four receptionists directed traffic, and on a long row of benches sat various people in emotional states ranging from agitation to apathy. Ara’s jaw was sore from grinding her teeth and biting back harsh words. A familiar figure waited on one of the benches for them, and Kendi’s bruised face brightened immediately.

  “Ben!” he said, and Ara laid a hand on his arm.

  “Wait,” she murmured. “We aren’t out of this until we’ve cleared the building.”

  Kendi checked himself, but Ara didn’t miss the look he shot at Ben, as if the young man were a rescue pod in hard vacuum. Part of Ara bristled. Although Ben had tracked Kendi down on the nets, Ara had arranged for his release, and now Kendi was all but ignoring her.

  On the other hand, I don’t feel about Ben the same way Kendi does, she thought wryly. I wonder if Kendi knows how transparent he is?

  Ben gave Kendi a small smile and patted his shoulder as the three of them exited the patrol station.

  Outside, hazy clouds covered the sun, but the air, as usual, was mild. The sidewalk was crowded. A pair of slaves washed windows near a pile of broken concrete. Another group of slaves dug into the exposed earth beneath the cement. They did not, Ara noticed, have power tools, and their clothes were ragged and filthy. An overseer in a red uniform watched them, energy whip in hand.

  The little group trotted quickly up the street. After they turned a corner, Ara ran a small scanner over all three of them.

  “No bugs,” she said. “We can talk.”

  “Thank all life!” Kendi burst out, ignoring the odd stares he gathered from passers-by.

  “Are you hungry?” Ben asked.

  “Starving.”

  Ara looked at him, and then, with a glance at the crowded street, drew him into an empty doorway. “You’re looking awfully cheerful for someone who was so depressed a minute ago.”

  “That was an act,” Kendi replied. “Mostly. In order to keep other…people off my back, I acted crazy. Manic-depressive. Most of the people in there are afraid of lunatics. You showed up during my depressive phase.”

  “And now you’re manic?” Ben commented dryly.

  Ara shook her head, still worried. Despite his explanation, she didn’t like Kendi’s cheerfulness. It was too sudden, even for him. Kendi was a child of open spaces, someone who coped with extended voyages by spending long hours in the Dream. A fortnight in a Unity prison must have been a nightmare of the worst kind.

  “Let’s get you something to eat,” she said. “And you can tell us what happened.”

  “I found him,” Kendi said.

  “Who?” Ara asked.

  “The kid. The one we’re looking for. I found him.”

  Ara caught her breath. “How? Where is he? What’s he-”

  “Mother,” Ben interrupted firmly. “You just said that Kendi needs to eat. I agree.”

  Ara’s first impulse was still to ignore Ben and ask Kendi more questions. A glance at Kendi’s ashen face, however, destroyed that idea.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I got carried away. Food first, questions later.”

  “Back at the ship?” Ben asked.

  Ara nodded. “Safest place to talk.”

  An hour later, Kendi, newly showered and in clean clothes, sat on his bed. Harenn sat next to him, methodically probing his wounds with fingers and medical scanner. Ara occupied the room’s only chair and watched intently. Kendi winced under Harenn’s ministrations but didn’t cry out.

  “You’re barbaric,” he growled.

  “The Australian aboriginal tribes,” Harenn said, “are reputed to have a superhuman ability to withstand pain. I assumed this is why you refused painkillers. You do not have this ability?”

  “That was before the whites tainted us,” Kendi said. His voice was still too cheerful for Ara’s taste.

  Harenn ignored him. “Your concussion has healed, as have the bruises and the cut. You have cracked no ribs. There is really nothing for me to do except give you pain medication, and you do not wish this.”

  “What about the boy?” Ara said from her chair. Her worries about Kendi would have to wait.

  Kendi explained about the alley, the fight, and the Unity patrol. “So I was arrested,” he finished. “The kid must have taken the time to search my pockets and grab the drugs. Otherwise I would’ve been in really deep cabbage.”

  “And you were not before?” Harenn muttered.

  “I want to be clear on this,” Ara said. “The boy possessed you.”

  Kendi nodded. “I felt that little shift you always get after someone else leaves your mind, but I hadn’t let him in. It was a possession-or something very close to it. What’s amazing is that he must have hit the patrol at the same time. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten away. That’s three people all at once, and two of them weren’t Silent.”

  Ara gnawed her lower lip. The situation frightened her more with every passing moment. There was someone out there who could take over the mind of an unwilling person-more than one person, in fact. There was no recorded instance of a person with such an ability in the entire history of the Dream. How many people could this boy control? Six? A dozen? An army?

  If, in your opinion, this child would pose a threat to the Confederation…

  “Why did he not possess the men who attacked him?” Harenn asked. Her dark eyes were half-closed above her opaque blue veil. It made her look sleepy.

  “I think he was going to,” Kendi said. “Then I showed up.”

  A knock came at the door and Ben entered with a tray. Kendi’s head jerked around and Ara almost rolled her eyes. She knew about Ben and Kendi’s breakup, of course. She knew that Ben had done the breaking
. But when she’d pressed for details, Ben had refused to give them. Ara gave a mental sigh. Ben was like his mother-too tight-lipped for his own good.

  Ben handed Kendi the tray. Delicious smells of spiced beans and honeyed bread wafted up from the dishes. “Jack’s talking to a buyer,” he said. “So I made you lunch.” He looked around for a place to sit and, seeing none, took up a spot on the floor.

  “You cooked?” Kendi said, genuinely impressed. “Wow.”

  Ben shrugged. “Someone had to. I hope it’s okay.”

  Kendi tried a bite and smiled. “It’s great. Though anything would be better than the slop I’ve been eating lately. Not,” he added hastily, “that this is anywhere close to that. I mean-”

  “Shut up and eat, Kendi,” Ben laughed.

  “Have there been other disturbances in the Dream?” Kendi asked.

  “Yes,” Ara said. “Silent all over the galaxy are frightened. Gretchen also managed to strike up a conversation with two Unity Silent without letting them know who she was. They’ve felt the boy’s presence, and they suspect his power goes beyond normal Silence.”

  “Hell,” Kendi muttered.

  “They haven’t narrowed his location to Rust,” Ara concluded, “but they are looking.”

  “How do we find this boy, then?” asked Harenn. “Before the Unity does?”

  “I’ll go back to the red light district,” Kendi said, mouth full. “None of you knows what he looks like.”

  Bad idea. Bad idea. “The guard will be watching for you,” Ara warned.

  “So?” Kendi countered in that maddenly cheerful tone. “My fines are paid. I’m not on a work list. They can’t do anything to me.”

  “Except follow you, harrass you, and re-arrest you under trumped-up charges like they did the first time.”

  “I don’t see any other way,” Kendi breezed. “In fact, I can start looking tonight. I feel fine.”

  The hell you say, Ara thought.

  “Make a composite drawing on the computer,” Harenn said. “That would be simple enough. Ben could put this image into our implants and set the computer to scan for the child. Then more of us could start looking.”

  “Good idea,” Ara said, shooting Harenn a grateful look.

  “But-” Kendi began.

  “Get to it as soon as you can.” Ara got up and moved for the door. “We can all fan out tonight. If anyone finds him, I want you to follow him. Find out where he lives. If you can get close enough, plant a tracer on him. It’ll be easier to persuade him to come with us if we know something about him. Kendi, you stay here and rest after you do the composite. That’s an order.”

  “But-”

  “I thought getting the child into our hands was highest priority,” Harenn interrupted. “Why aren’t we simply snatching him off the street?”

  “The boy can possess the unwilling and non-Silent, Harenn,” Ara replied levelly. “How far do you think a kidnaping attempt would get?”

  “Stun him,” Harenn countered. “Once he is on the ship-”

  “He could possess the entire crew,” Ara finished. “Wouldn’t that be fun? He needs to come of his own free will. Let’s move out. Kendi, composite. Then rest.”

  She left, all but towing Harenn behind her.

  Kendi watched the door slide shut. It didn’t clang like the…other doors. Ben moved to the chair and Kendi kept a wary eye on him. After a moment he realized it was because he was afraid Ben would steal his food.

  “Was it bad?” Ben asked.

  Kendi looked up. “Was what bad?”

  “The prison.”

  “It was what you’d expect.”

  “What happened in there?” Ben pressed.

  “Nothing important,” Kendi replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Kendi, don’t you think you should talk about-”

  “Suddenly you’re an authority on talking?” Kendi snarled. Ben flushed and Kendi felt instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’m not angry with you. Thanks for finding me.”

  “I couldn’t leave you in jail.” Ben ran a hand through thick red hair. “You think the boy’s a relative, don’t you?”

  Startled, Kendi swallowed a mouthful of beans and gave a shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Don’t lie,” Ben admonished. “The only time I see you this excited is when you think you’re on the trail of your family. Kendi, please don’t get your hopes up. You know what the odds are, don’t you?”

  “I always get my hopes up,” Kendi said, more sulkily than he’d intended. “Sometimes it’s all that keeps me going.”

  “I just don’t want to see you hurt, okay?”

  “Don’t get on my back, Ben,” Kendi warned.

  Ben got up. “Fine. You should make that composite.” He pulled a dermospray from his pocket. “I brought this up from the smuggling compartments. I figured you’d want it. Do the composite first, though.”

  He set the spray on the bed next to Kendi and left. Why had he snapped at Ben like that? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Maybe I can make it up to him, he thought. Send him flowers? And chocolates too, fresh from the hold.

  An image of Ben surrounded by thousands of red roses and with satin boxes of chocolate piled at his feet popped into Kendi’s head. He began to laugh and found he couldn’t stop. Guffaws echoed about the spartan room. With a great deal of snickering and snuffling, he got himself under control. Kendi wiped his streaming eyes, feeling strangely tired. His ribs ached.

  Better do the composite, then, he thought.

  Kendi got to his feet. A headache was gathering, and the thought of a fat dermospray full of painkillers was unbelievably tempting. Painkillers, however, would interfere with the drugs he needed to enter the Dream later. Gingerly he sat down at the terminal, called up an artist’s program, and set to work. Half an hour later, the kid’s startling blue eyes stared at Kendi from the screen beneath loosely-curled black hair.

  As he finished, he became aware of the unyielding ceramic walls around him. The ship seemed to wrap itself about Kendi in a confining cocoon. The Outback and its wide-open spaces called. He uploaded the composite into the ship’s computer and sent Ara notification that he was finished. Without waiting for a reply, he shut down the terminal and picked up the spray Ben had left him.

  Slowly and painfully, Kendi undressed, got out his spear, positioned it under his knee, and set the dermospray against his arm. Thump. Colors swirled behind his eyes, and he found himself in the cool darkness of his cave. He was about to begin dancing around the spiral that would carry him to the surface when he paused. Another cave entrance lay off to one side. After a moment’s consideration, Kendi plucked a burning torch out of thin air and went in.

  The second cave was enormous, large enough to contain a good-sized ship. It made an empty space around Kendi that swallowed the slight sound of his footsteps. A pile of wood lay in the center of the cave, and Kendi tossed the torch onto it. The wood caught and blazed brightly. Far overhead, a hole let the smoke out.

  The fire illuminated smooth, dry walls. This was not a living cave with water dripping from walls and ceiling. Water would have ruined the paintings.

  The walls were covered with them. Livid colors leaped gracefully across stone and traced history as they went. At the bottom of one wall squatted a pregnant woman in labor. Further along, an infant that bore a strong resemblance to Kendi crawled across a floor. In other pictures, the baby crossed into childhood and adolescence. In the background, various adults made worried faces about their steadily declining contact with their ancestral traditions. They pooled their resources to buy passage on a colony ship to re-establish tribal ways on the planet Pelagosa. Kendi and his family went into cryo-sleep.

  A thousand marks painstakingly scratched into the stone stood for the passage of a thousand years. Kendi also felt it stood for the loss of a thousand Real People. The next picture showed slipships, invented while Kendi’s family and the other colonists slept, overtaking the slower-than-light colony
ship and landing at Pelagosa to set up colonies of their own. Governments rose and fell back on Earth, and people forgot about the dozens of colony ships still patiently coasting through space.

  Another picture. A slipship crept up to the colony vessel. Slavers boarded and took control. A line of chained Real People trudged up to the auction block.

  Another picture. Kendi’s owner gave him a blood test and discovered Kendi was Silent, a term Kendi had never heard before. The man put Kendi up for resale at a quick profit.

  Another picture. A short, round woman touched Kendi’s shoulder. Kendi entered the monastery on Bellerophon, entered the Dream, studied navigation and piloting.

  Met Ben.

  Kendi gave himself a shake. He hadn’t come down here to meander through the past. A pile of roots and other plant material lay near a water bag. Kendi chewed different roots and mixed the resulting paste with water on a flat stone until he had a palate of several colors. Using his fingers, he drew figures on the wall with the cooling paint. He detailed his arrival on Rust, the time in the market, his encounter with the strange boy.

  The Unity guard.

  Kendi’s hands trembled and he faltered before he could draw the details of his arrest. The cave wall was chilly beneath his fingertips. Abruptly, he felt restless, hemmed in by the cave. He had to get out, get out now. He shook the paint from his hands, trotted out of the side cave into the main cavern, and danced his way up the spiral to the outside world.

  The Outback spread before him, free and wide and open. Hot air moved over his body. The falcon screamed a greeting and Kendi waved. Voices, many more than normal, buzzed and whispered on the wind, but Kendi ignored them. The falcon plunged to earth and changed into a kangaroo. Kendi whooped and took off running, long legs flying over the sandy earth. The kangaroo bounded alongside, easily keeping pace. Kendi ran and ran beneath the pure golden sun.