"Records differ on this point," Bren reminded them. "We don’t know if Treetown started before or after the Ched-Balaar took the first group of humans into the Dream, but that’s a minor aside. Who all did the Ched-Balaar first bring into the Dream?"
The holographic view shifted again to a night-time campfire on a fern-covered forest floor. A group of Ched-Balaar sat near it playing odd-looking drums and rattles.
"Irfan Qasad," Jeren called out. A sharp-faced woman with a long brown braid popped into existence near the campfire. Her expression was both thoughtful and wary. "I’d slip her space anytime."
"Jeren," Bren warned, and Kendi poked him in the ribs with an elbow.
"Daniel Vik," said someone else. A stocky, blond man who looked barely old enough to shave appeared next to Irfan.
"Yin Ping," said Willa, barely loud enough to be heard. An Asian man with silvering black hair puffed into being. The class continued calling out names until the full roster of the first human Silent was complete. Kendi didn’t contribute. His mind alternated between thoughts about his family brought on by the hologram of the colony ship and thoughts of Pitr brought on by nothing in particular. A gentle breeze moved through the open window, smelling of leaves and bark.
"After it was determined that humans could indeed enter the Dream," Bren said, "Irfan Qasad consulted with a group of geneticists, both human and Ched-Balaar, and they determined that the current gene pool didn’t carry enough genes for Silence-though they didn’t call it that yet-to ensure the trait would continue. The Margery Daw carried a great many frozen human embryos, however, and they decided to alter some of them for Silence. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Silent don’t develop well in artificial wombs. They just wither and die. No one knows exactly why. You’ll learn more about that when you take biology."
Utang’s blue eyes. Pitr’s hazel ones. Slapping mosquitoes, catching frogs. Falling from the roof, grasping Pitr’s hand. Writhing in pain under snapping silver bands.
" …do know that she married Daniel Vik and eventually had three children," Bren said. "Two of them were Silent. Much of the rest of her history is up in the air. Vik did kidnap the eldest boy and disappear, probably to Othertown, since that’s where he turned up later. The question is, why did he do it? Some records from the time hint that Vik suffered from depression and paranoid delusions. That he had some kind of fight with Irfan herself is almost certain, but what could possibly have …"
Little Martina crying in her slave square. Dad’s face contorted with pain as he reached for Mom’s hand. The flying dinosaur’s stabbing beak. Pitr’s laugh. Festival.
" …appears that Irfan lied to him about their children. It’s possible Vik knew they weren’t his kids. A surviving fragment from his own writings says, ‘My children don’t share my genes,’ which seems to be pretty clear. At any rate, he whipped the government of Othertown into a frenzy. Not all humans on Bellerophon liked the Silent, and a fair number of Ched-Balaar thought bringing humans into the Dream in the first place was a mistake. Vik was building a powder keg, and Othertown was almost ready to declare genocide against the Silent, even though Vik himself was …"
He would do it tonight, talk to Pitr at the festival tonight. After all, Pitr didn’t seem to be the type to get angry. He had always looked gentle to Kendi, anyway. But how would he react?
" …used the Dream to perform research together, even though they were on different planets and separated by light years of empty space. As a team, they discovered slipspace and how to use it. So you could also say that Irfan had a hand in the discovery of slipspace, since she was the one to spearhead interplanetary communication through the Dream. Of course, it was slipspace and slipships that allowed Vik to get his hands on weapons powerful enough to …"
Pup’s eyes going flat, his body going stiff. Rejection in his eyes to words Kendi hadn’t quite said. What if the same thing happened with Pitr? Kendi didn’t think he could face that.
" …resigned from her post as governor in a cloud of scandal, and the question went unanswered. Did Irfan order the assassination of the governor of Othertown or did he truly commit …"
The room seemed suddenly close and stifling, despite the open window. Kendi abruptly found he couldn’t sit still. He needed to move, to-
" …you think, Kendi?"
Kendi looked up, startled. Bren, Jeren, Willa, and everyone else in the room were staring at him expectantly. He scrambled to remember what Sister Bren had asked but couldn’t do it. "What?"
"Do you think Irfan ordered the assassination of the governor of Othertown?" Bren repeated patiently.
Kendi shrugged. Who cared?
"Well, it’s your homework essay-all of you," Bren said. "There’s half an hour left for class. Log into the system and start your research now. Work with a partner, if you want. I’m really interested in what you come up with, so turn them in tomorrow morning, all right?"
The class groaned but got out their data pads. Holographic screens popped up all over the room. Kendi got out his own pad, and Sister Bren moved among the class, pointing out places to find both information and speculation. Several students teamed up with partners. Kendi’s restlessness grew. It felt like he was back in his slave square, hemmed in on all sides.
"Wannaworktogether?" Kite blurted.
"I have to get out of here," Kendi muttered. And when Sister Bren’s back was turned, he slipped out the door.
Outside, the alternating patches of warm sunlight and cool shade felt much better than the confining classroom. Kendi heaved a sigh of relief in the bright, free air and trotted across the boards. After a moment, he sped up until he was running, all but flying over the walkways. A rope ladder caught his eye and he climbed it to a long balcony that ran the length of the building. Through the windows he saw what appeared to be a series of offices. Brown-clad humans and blond-furred Ched-Balaar worked at desks or reclined on couches and pillows. Kendi assumed the latter were in the Dream.
A set of stairs at the end of the balcony lead downward, and Kendi found himself on a wide platform where a life-sized statue of Irfan carved in gray marble stood on a pedestal. Pots of red and blue flowers had been placed at the base. Kendi paused to examine the statue. Irfan was lifting a hand in front of her as if about to accept a gift, and her face had a determined cast to it. A scroll was carved on the pedestal. At the top were the words "The Wisdom of Irfan," and it was inscribed with a series of sayings:
1. A serene mind is a strong mind.
2. The Dream is no less real than what we call reality.
3. We are but caretakers of the eternal Dream.
4. You must be a person first and Silent second.
5. The greater your knowledge, the smaller your risk.
6. You may gain, but not at someone else’s expense.
7. Your mind should be open, but your mouth should be closed.
8. The universe provides, we distribute.
9. Pay forward, not back.
10. The real world becomes the Dream.
Kendi read the first one aloud. "A serene mind is a strong mind." Then his mind must be weak indeed. The restlessness grew stronger. Despite Mother Ara’s earlier warning, Kendi used a balcony railing to clamber up to the roof of the building and from there climb into the branches of the talltree. His bare feet found easy purchase on the rough bark. The tree flatted as it went up, and eventually Kendi was able to poke his head up out of the green foliage.
The sun shone down gold between fluffy white clouds. Small animals chirped in the leaves around him, and a hawk-like bird coasted overhead. Kendi watched it pass. It felt as if he could take another step upward and fly himself. He grinned. The sky reminded him of the endless Outback, though the sun was considerably kinder. Bellerophon was a good place.
He climbed down a ways and lounged comfortably at the juncture of two thick branches. It was like being in a green cave, cool and leafy. Birds and small lizards chirruped at each other as they darted about hunting insects. A
clump of dead twigs and branches had gathered where the wide branch met the talltree trunk, presumably blown or fallen there. Kendi selected a straight piece half as long as his own leg and a few centimeters in diameter. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, then produced a folding knife from his pocket and fell to whittling it. Some of the strangeness of it all washed over him. His birthplace was countless light-years away and almost a thousand years in the past, but here he was, sitting in a giant tree on a planet where humans worked with aliens to enter the Dream.
Were the Dream and the Dreamtime the same thing? Kendi tried to think, wishing he had paid more attention to the stories told by the Real People Reconstructionists. The Dreamtime was the source of everything, a place outside space and time. A part of every living creature was there, and there were those among the original tribes of Real People who had learned to walk its paths. This sounded a bit like the Dream. The original Real People had also used Head Talk-telepathy, Kendi supposed-for communication in a climate where a constantly-open mouth could lead to dehydration, and the Dream as Mother Ara explained it was used for communication among mutants.
The knife continued its work, though Kendi’s mind lay elsewhere. The Real People Reconstructionists had always maintained that Aboriginal culture was the pinnacle of human accomplishment, that the reason mutants could no longer enter the Dreamtime or use Head Talk was because they had left the ancient ways for a more materialistic state. The same had happened to the Real People themselves after being forcibly separated from their ancient way of life until their descendants had forgotten the Dreamtime completely. When people came to realize the foolishness of such a life, they would find it once again.
Kendi snorted. They seemed to have found it just fine without changing one bit. Of course, the Real People hadn’t known about the Ched-Balaar or what could be accomplished through genetic engineering.
The problem was that Kendi couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. He had gone through several meditation exercise sessions with Mother Ara, but it always felt wrong for him, somehow. The couch felt lumpy and strange, and his mind always wandered during the sessions instead of becoming calm and clear. Willa, Jeren, and Kite all said they could calm themselves right down, but Kendi couldn’t seem to get the trick of it. Why?
The knife closed, seemingly of its own accord, and Kendi looked down at the stick. It had become a short spear, complete with sharpened tip. Kendi ran his hands up and down the shaft. A few splinters here and there, but nothing a little sandpaper couldn’t take care of. Why had he made it? It was as if something had guided his hands. Kendi looked at it for a long moment, then gave a little smile of recognition and of happiness.
With a grunt of annoyance, Ara shut down the data pad. Her holographic screen winked out, and she ran a tired hand over her face. The sun had moved away from her home office window and the room had cooled nicely. It was scant comfort.
Ara sighed. There were simply no other clues to be found. She had gone over every report, every image, every fact, and she couldn’t find anything the Guardians might have missed. Somewhere out there was a madman who was killing Silent, and Ara was becoming more and more determined to find him. Part of her said she should leave the hunt to the Guardians, but another part of her, one with a louder voice, yammered that it was her duty to help in whatever way she could. After all, which was more urgent-saving Silent from a slaver or saving Silent from a killer? Not only that, the killer might go after someone Ara knew-her mother or her sister or her niece.
Unfortunately, Ara had the chill feeling that the only way to get further information was wait for the killer to strike again and hope for more clues.
At least Ben would be safe. Not only was he male, he wasn’t Silent. At least, not in any way that counted. She looked at the hologram of Ben, taken at age ten, that sat on her desk. His blue eyes were merry, his smile a bit mischievous. He looked nothing like her, of course. Several years ago Ara and a team of Children had been exploring what they thought was a derelict pirate vessel found in orbit around a gas giant. It hadn’t been quite derelict, though the ship’s only inhabitants hadn’t been aware of much. They were a series of embryos frozen in a cryo-unit that had been missed or left behind for some other reason. The readout said the embryos were Silent.
Ara took them back to Bellerophon with her, indeed held the unit on her lap for most of the trip home. Twelve viable, motherless embryos found exactly at a time when Ara’s arms ached to hold a baby. Ara’s doctor chose one at random for implantation. That left the others still frozen, but Ara didn’t want more than one. Nine months later, Ben was born, and Ara thought she would burst with happiness. Even when he showed no awareness of the Dream by age ten, eleven, twelve, and onward, Ara still loved him. She couldn’t help but feel disappointment and not a little guilt, though. Was it her fault? Had she done something wrong during her pregnancy? Or during Ben’s early development? Or was it because he had spent over a decade in frozen limbo? No one could give her an answer.
Now, however, it was an advantage. She wouldn’t have to worry about him being killed.
The familiar sound of the front door opening came to her, followed by the equally familiar sound of Ben’s footsteps. She checked the clock. School was out already? She had been working longer than she’d thought. Definitely time for a break. Ara left her office and headed for the kitchen because that was the first room Ben usually hit after school these days.
She found him staring into the open refrigerator.
"Hey, Mom," he said distractedly. "There’s nothing to eat."
"Hey, yourself," she said. "Then close the door."
Ben obeyed and, with a put-upon sigh, began to rummage through the cupboards. His data pad peeked out from his back pocket, and Ara abruptly found that endearingly cute, a boyish gesture on someone who was all-too-rapidly becoming a man. When he turned around with a box of crackers, she swept him into a hug.
"Mom!" he protested. "Geez."
"Think of it as your room and board payment," she told him, stepping back. "How was school?"
"Fine." He crunched a handful of crackers. "You look tired. Something wrong?"
Ara hadn’t told him she was consulting with the Guardians, though she was pretty sure he’d heard about the murders. Almost everyone on Bellerophon had heard, despite the Guardians’ attempt to keep things quiet. She had been reluctant to mention it to him-no point in making him worry.
"I’m a little overworked," she admitted. "I need a break."
"So what are we doing for Festival tonight?" Ben asked.
"I thought the usual," she said. "Dinner here, then down to the games and the fireworks."
Ben made a face. "Does that mean you’ve invited them?"
"Attention! Attention!" said the house computer. "Incoming call for Mother Araceil Rymar."
"Put it through to the office," Ara replied as always, and left Ben to his crackers. In her office, the wall screen showed Sister Bren, one of the teachers at the monastery.
"I hate to bother you so close to Festival," Bren said, "but I wanted to talk to you about Kendi. He slipped out of class half an hour early today, and one of the other teachers saw him climbing down from a talltree a while later. I’ve also noticed him daydreaming a great deal during lessons. I’m afraid he’s shaping up to be a difficult one. Freed slave syndrome, I expect."
Ara puffed out her cheeks in mute agreement. "He shows a lot of the signs, doesn’t he? Just this morning he climbed onto the dorm roof and broke a gutter. Considering what he went through, though, I’m surprised it’s not a lot worse."
"He doesn’t cause disruption in class," Bren agreed. "But he won’t pass history if he makes this a habit."
"He has a lesson with me in a few minutes. I’ll talk to him then," Ara promised. "He’s going to need counseling, I think, but you know how touchy suggesting it can be, especially at that age."
"Don’t I just. Look, I won’t write him up this time, but if he does it again, he’ll end up with
extra work detail."
Ara signed off with a grimace. Well, she should have been expecting it. Ex-slaves, especially young ones, tended to run in one of two directions-acting in or acting out. The ones who acted in stayed very quiet, tiptoeing around the monastery as if they were afraid of being noticed and sold back into servitude. Willa struck Ara as one of these. The ones who acted out went in the other direction, taking out suppressed rage and hidden fears on their teachers and fellow students. Jeren Drew was clearly one of these, and now Kendi seemed to be joining him. A precious few seemed to come through slavery relatively unscathed. Kite looked to fall into this category, but it was too early to know for sure. Maybe his strange speech was a symptom of a deeper issue.
In any case, Kendi was Ara’s special problem, since he had been assigned to Ara-at her request-for one-on-one instruction, making her a surrogate parent in many ways. Jeren, Kite, and Willa had all been matched with other teachers. Although it was certainly possible to take on more than one student at a time, the monastery frowned on the practice, especially when it came to teaching ex-slaves. It often helped a slave’s damaged self-esteem to know that the current teacher was focused on him or her alone.
A now-familiar clanking issued from behind Ben’s closed door. Ara knocked, then poked her head inside. Ben was pressed into a chair, shoving at a stack of weights with his legs.
"Your aunt and uncle are coming over for dinner," she said. "We’ll be eating late."
"I figured," Ben grunted, face red with exertion. "Are the jerks coming too?"
Ara put her hands on her hips. "I wish you would try to get along with your cousins. You don’t have any brothers or sisters, and it would be nice if-"
"The hell it would." Clank. Clank.
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