they had to do was look at me; all they had to do was try to
touch my mind. I glanced at Perrymeade and Sand. There was no point in trying
to explain anything to them; they wouldn’t give a damn anyway.
“I have a question, before you go,” Sand said, turning to
me. “Why aren’t you a functional telepath? Perrymeade said you used to be a
telepath, but now you’re not. How do you get rid of a thing like that?”
I looked straight in through his dim, dead eyes. “You have
to kill someone.”
He started. I wondered how long it had been since someone
had surprised him. I wondered exactly what it was about what I’d said that had.
“You killed someone?” Perrymeade echoed.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” I glanced at him. “‘When I
was seventeen. I blew him away with a tightbeam handgun. It was self-defense.
But it doesn’t matter if you’re a psion and someone’s brain goes nova inside
you. If I was really Hydran, it would’ve killed me. But I wasn’t Hydran enough.
All it did was fuck up my head. So now I’m only human.”
Perrymeade’s face went a little slacker. I watched him pull
it together again with a negotiator’s reflex.
Neither of them said anything more, until finally a mod came
spiraling down out of the heights and Sand said, “Good-bye.”
Five
A pruvLre corporate mod took us over to Freaktown. No wandering
through its streets on foot for a Tau vip, even one whose job was to pretend
that he understood its people as well as he did his own. As we passed over the
river I looked down, seeing the lone bridge, one tenuous filament connecting
two peoples and the different ways they looked at the same universe. I thought
about Miya: how she’d been chosen, trained, to help a human child the way no
human could. How she had helped him ....
And then she’d betrayed him. I wondered whether I was seeing
too incomplete an image to make sense of the truth, or whether Hydrans really
were that alien, so alien I’d never understand how their minds worked.
The mod came down again somewhere deep in the heart of
Freaktown. We stepped out into the enclosed courtyard of a sprawling structure
Perrymeade told me was the Community Hall. Community meant Hydran, to
Hydrans. Community .. . communing, communication, to live in a commune
... to have a common destiny, history, mind .... My own mind played
with the word like a dog gnawing a bone, finding meanings layered inside
meanirgs, wondering whether any of them were ones the Hydrans had intended.
Here in the courtyard, sealed off from the decaying streets,
there were actually a few shrubs and trees; a few of the colors of life, only a
little dusty and overgrown. I looked down. A garden of brightly tiled mosaic
spread outward from where I stood. Dim with age and dust, it still made my eyes
strobe.
Off to my left a stream barely the width of my open hand
wove a silver thread through the dry shrubbery. Half hidden in the bushes I
could see a velvet patch of mossgrass, so green and perfect that I started
toward it without thinking.
I stepped across the stream onto the waiting patch of green ...
and found the knee-high sculpture of a Hydran woman sitting cross-legged on a
mandala of tile. Her inset eyes of green stone met mine, as if she had been
expecting me to be expectittg this.
No one in the courtyard could see what I was seeing now. No
one who didn’t step across the stream would ever see it. I smiled.
I looked up as someone emerged from the shadows at the far
side of the courtyard: a Hydran, striding toward the others as if he was only
human, &S though he didn’t have a better way to get from one place to
another. He was one of the guests from the reception last night. My memory
offered up his name: Hanjen.
He stopped almost in midstride as he saw me. The look on his
face was the same look my own face still wore: pure astonishment.
I stepped back across the stream into the courtyard. He
stood perfectly still, watching as I rejoined
touch my mind. I glanced at Perrymeade and Sand. There was no point in trying
to explain anything to them; they wouldn’t give a damn anyway.
“I have a question, before you go,” Sand said, turning to
me. “Why aren’t you a functional telepath? Perrymeade said you used to be a
telepath, but now you’re not. How do you get rid of a thing like that?”
I looked straight in through his dim, dead eyes. “You have
to kill someone.”
He started. I wondered how long it had been since someone
had surprised him. I wondered exactly what it was about what I’d said that had.
“You killed someone?” Perrymeade echoed.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” I glanced at him. “‘When I
was seventeen. I blew him away with a tightbeam handgun. It was self-defense.
But it doesn’t matter if you’re a psion and someone’s brain goes nova inside
you. If I was really Hydran, it would’ve killed me. But I wasn’t Hydran enough.
All it did was fuck up my head. So now I’m only human.”
Perrymeade’s face went a little slacker. I watched him pull
it together again with a negotiator’s reflex.
Neither of them said anything more, until finally a mod came
spiraling down out of the heights and Sand said, “Good-bye.”
Five
A pruvLre corporate mod took us over to Freaktown. No wandering
through its streets on foot for a Tau vip, even one whose job was to pretend
that he understood its people as well as he did his own. As we passed over the
river I looked down, seeing the lone bridge, one tenuous filament connecting
two peoples and the different ways they looked at the same universe. I thought
about Miya: how she’d been chosen, trained, to help a human child the way no
human could. How she had helped him ....
And then she’d betrayed him. I wondered whether I was seeing
too incomplete an image to make sense of the truth, or whether Hydrans really
were that alien, so alien I’d never understand how their minds worked.
The mod came down again somewhere deep in the heart of
Freaktown. We stepped out into the enclosed courtyard of a sprawling structure
Perrymeade told me was the Community Hall. Community meant Hydran, to
Hydrans. Community .. . communing, communication, to live in a commune
... to have a common destiny, history, mind .... My own mind played
with the word like a dog gnawing a bone, finding meanings layered inside
meanirgs, wondering whether any of them were ones the Hydrans had intended.
Here in the courtyard, sealed off from the decaying streets,
there were actually a few shrubs and trees; a few of the colors of life, only a
little dusty and overgrown. I looked down. A garden of brightly tiled mosaic
spread outward from where I stood. Dim with age and dust, it still made my eyes
strobe.
Off to my left a stream barely the width of my open hand
wove a silver thread through the dry shrubbery. Half hidden in the bushes I
could see a velvet patch of mossgrass, so green and perfect that I started
toward it without thinking.
I stepped across the stream onto the waiting patch of green ...
and found the knee-high sculpture of a Hydran woman sitting cross-legged on a
mandala of tile. Her inset eyes of green stone met mine, as if she had been
expecting me to be expectittg this.
No one in the courtyard could see what I was seeing now. No
one who didn’t step across the stream would ever see it. I smiled.
I looked up as someone emerged from the shadows at the far
side of the courtyard: a Hydran, striding toward the others as if he was only
human, &S though he didn’t have a better way to get from one place to
another. He was one of the guests from the reception last night. My memory
offered up his name: Hanjen.
He stopped almost in midstride as he saw me. The look on his
face was the same look my own face still wore: pure astonishment.
I stepped back across the stream into the courtyard. He
stood perfectly still, watching as I rejoined
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