Dreamfall by Joan D. Vinge

human mythology, the Hydra had been a monster with a
hundred heads. “What kind of demands are they making?”
    “The usual,” Perrymeade said, sounding tired. “More autonomy
... but also more integration, more job opportunities, more of Tau’s money;
reparations for the entire planet, which they claim we stole from them. They
want the Federation’s attention turned on them while the pf[‘s inspection team
is here.”
    “That sounds fair to me,” I said. I rolled the camph between
my fingers, focusing on the bitter cold/heat inside my mouth.
    Perrymeade raised his eyebrows and sighed. “I’m sure it does
to them too. It even does to me, when I try to see it their way. But it isn’t
that simple. It wasn’t Tau that took control of this world away from them—or
Draco, for that matter.” He glanced at Sand as he said it. “If they had more
autonomy at this point, what good would it do them? They’ve come to rely on Tau
as their support system just as much as Tau’s human citizens ... possibly more.
The Hydrans have no real technological or economic base; they lost their
interstellar network long before we got here. Where would they be without us?”
    I put the camph back between my lips so that I didn’t have
to answer.
    “If they think the FTA will see it differently, they’re
wrong.” He shook his head. “They don’t want to believe that—I don’t even want
to believe that—but that’s how it is. The real problem isn’t simply that their
eyes look ab—” he broke off as I looked up at him, “strange ... that their eyes
seem strange to us,” he muttered, “or the color of their skin, or that they don’t
eat meat. None of that matters anymore.” His hand tightened. “Hydrans are different They have the ability to intrude profoundly on another person’s life, to
violate a person’s privacy at any given moment—” His eyes, which had been
looking at me without seeing me, suddenly registered my face, my eyes again. “It’s
not that easy,” he said, looking away. “ft’s not easy at all. Maybe it’s
impossible.”
    “Tell me about it,” I said, and swallowed the butt end of
the camph. “So if the Feds won’t do anything to force Tau to change its
policies, why is Tau afraid to let them find out what happened?”
    “It wouldn’t look good,” Sand said. “Obviously we don’t want
it to appear that some group of radicals is functioning, unchecked, as the
major influence in the Hydran Homeland. It isn’t good for Tau’s image—or for
the Hydrans’ either—if the FTA sees social chaos over there.” He jerked his
head in the direction of the river. “The kind of attention that it will attract
from the FTA will not be the sort that HARM intends, believe me.”
    I listened, squinting at him in the reflected glare of too
many windows in too many towers, grimacing as my mind cut through the
self-serving bullshit to the truth: They were right. Humans would never
feel safe enough to share real power with Hydrans. And the FTA was just as
human as Tau, when it came to that.
    “I see what you mean,” I said, getting up again. I looked toward
the plex where the missing child’s parents were going through a kind of hell
that cut across all the artificial barriers of race and money, that proved the
only universal truth was pain. “But what do you think I can do to change that?”
    Perrymeade’s body language eased, as if he finally
understood what he saw in my face, or thought he did. But still he hesitated
before he said, “We’ve told the Hydran Council everything that Sand has
explained to you. But they still claim to know nothing. I can’t believe that.
You share a ... heritage with them, but you’ve lived among humans. You have a
better chance of making them understand what they’re risking by harboring these
dissidents ....”
    What they were risking. I touched my head. I could
tell the Hydrans what they had to lose ... but who knew if they’d even give me
a chance. All