Trickster by Steven Harper Page A

Children and relaying emergency messages through the Dream, Kendi had finally had enough of waiting. What if someone sold his family? What if they escaped and vanished into the post-Despair chaos? What if they died? Every day brought a greater chance that this precious lead would dry up. Eventually, Kendi had gone to the Council of Irfan. They had been reluctant to loan him a ship, despite the fact that most of the missing field teams were accounted for and most of the Children, bereft of their Silence, had little or nothing to do.
      "Everything is too chaotic," replied Grandmother Adept Pyori. "Governments and economies are collapsing. We need all our people close to home in case something happens."
      "That makes this the best time for me to go," Kendi shot back. "It takes a lot of time for galactic governments and mega-corporations to collapse. I need to get out there before everything falls apart completely and my family vanishes forever."
      The blank faces of the Council, however, said they were still unconvinced, and in the end Kendi fell back on emotional blackmail.
      "I saved the lives of every single person in this room," he said. "I saved the lives of your family, your friends, and every living creature in this universe. All I want in return is a single ship and a crew to go with her. How can that be too much to ask?"
      The Council had agreed, but with limitations. When they laid down the time limit, Kendi wondered what he would have had to do to get a ship for longer than two months. Create a new universe from scratch?
      "We are not doing this to be difficult, Father Kendi," Grandmother Adept Pyori said, as if reading his mind. "Every Silent who can still reach the Dream is precious beyond measure. Have you considered what will happen to us in the next fifty or sixty years? The danger we are in?"
      "I don't understand, Grandmother," Kendi replied.
      "No new Silent are entering the Dream," she said solemnly. "And one day the remaining Silent who can enter it will die."
      A cold chill slid over Kendi's body at her words. He had been so busy over the last six months that this hadn't occurred to him. The Children of Irfan was an organization that existed only because of the Dream and the communication it provided. If no Silent could enter the Dream, the Children would disappear, swallowed by history.

     
  The breeze from the top of the Varsis Building continued to wash over Kendi. He felt bold and alive, filled with optimism despite his problems. He would find his two family members on Drim, and perhaps they would know something about the others. Then together they could keep looking. Kendi was also looking forward to introducing them to Ben and telling them about--
      " Father? "
      Kendi tapped his earpiece. "I'm here, Lucia. What's going on?"
      " Ben's found something on the newsnets that you'll want to see. Can you come down to the suite? "
      "Is it something you can upload to my implant?" Kendi asked, already heading for the elevator doors at the other end of the observation deck.
      Pause. " Not really ."
      Kendi's stomach tensed as he entered the lift and told it he wanted the eighteenth floor, one of eight floors that made up a hotel within the Varsis Building. The lift obediently dropped. Was the news good or bad? Had to be bad. Otherwise Lucia would have told him something about it.
      The Varsis Hotel hallways were plushly carpeted and thickly wallpapered, hushing every sound. A holographic waterfall rushed over stones at an intersection, filling the air with the sound of gushing water. It even smelled of moss. The hotel was on the expensive side, but Kendi saw no reason not to get comfortable digs. Ara would have told everyone to live on the ship, but Kendi found it annoying to go through the spaceport every time he wanted to do something in the city, and had decided the Children could pay for a hotel. He was glad to have insisted on a huge purse of hard-currency freemarks from