Dreamer (28 page)

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I am...uncertain,” Harenn said. “I feel disoriented. One moment I was in this chair, then I was...on a beach? Then I was in my chair again.”

“I couldn’t hold you there,” I said. “You slipped through my fingers.”

“It failed, then,” Harenn said in a flat, disappointed voice.

“The fact that you were there at all is significant,” the blond Adept said from his own chair. He sounded awed. “This is astounding. A non-Silent in the Dream.”

I tried to stand up, but ended up falling back onto the couch from dizziness.

“I think my student needs rest,” Kendi said beside me. He must have come out of the Dream and pulled the strange stick out from under his knee. “I’ll take him back to his room. We can talk more about this later.”

Grandfather Melthine blinked his eyes open. He sat up in time to catch Kendi’s last remark. It seemed like he was going to object, then he looked at me.

“Take him home,” he said. “And we certainly will discuss this again.”

Kendi brought me back to the dormitory. We didn’t talk much. I think he was still a little angry at me for going into the Dream without his permission. Tough.

Not that it matters now.

Anyway. I wasn’t tired anymore when we got back to my room, but I wanted to be alone, so I let Kendi think I was exhausted. He left me sitting on my bed.

“Attention! Attention!” the computer said. “A delivery is waiting at the front desk.”

Probably my clothes and stuff. I was about to go downstairs and get them when someone knocked. I thought maybe Kendi had dropped something in my room or something, but when I opened the door, an old man was standing there. He wore white, and his clothes had that expensive, silky look I recognized from some of my jobbers. He also looked familiar. White hair, blue eyes, some wrinkles, sharp nose.

The train. It was the rude guy old man from the train.

“Hello, Sejal,” he said. “May I come in?”

Too startled to say no, I let him in and shut the door. He sat on the corner of the bed farthest from me, keeping his clothes wrapped tight around him, as if he was afraid to let them touch me.

“Who—?” I began.

“My name is Padric Sufur,” he said. “I want to make you a proposition.”

He was a
jobber?
“I don’t do that anymore,” I told him. “So you can forget it.”

The man blinked, and I could hear the tiny click of his eyelids. “You don’t—oh! No, no. Nothing like that.” He blinked again. “I’m the head of Sufur Enterprises, and I have some information about the Children of Irfan that might interest you. About Mother Araceil Rymar, in particular.”

“What information?” I asked, tensing. This guy was setting off alarms left and right and I wished I hadn’t let him in. If I shouted for help, would someone come?

“Mother Araceil has orders from Empress Kalii herself,” Sufur said. “Orders to kill you.”

The words were so strange, I didn’t know how to react. “Kill me?” I said stupidly.

“Yes.” He shifted on the bed, edging away from me. “The Empress ordered Mother Araceil to watch you and decide if you are a danger to the Indepencdence Confederation. If she—Araceil—decides you are a danger, she is to kill you.”

“She wouldn’t,” I said hotly, but something stirred in my gut.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But those were the Empress’s orders.”

My face was hot and my hands were cold. I remembered the way Mother Ara would look at me, as if she were sizing me up. I remembered how the Unity had sent warships to try to bring me back.

“How do you know this?” I demanded. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I told you. I’m Padric Sufur. We touched on the train, so you know I’m Silent. I touched you—” Did he shudder? “—to make sure you were the person I was looking for.”

My fingers were twisting my sweater like snakes. I was getting mad and found myself lapsing into my Jesse personality, the one I used with jobbers. “So you’re Silent. Big fucking deal. Everyone around this shithole is Silent. How the hell does that tell you that Moth—that Ara’s supposed to gash me?”

“I have connections,” he said simply. “Mother Araceil Rymar has made a number of reports about you to Empress Kan maja Kalii. Twice Araceil possessed a Silent slave so they could meet in person to talk about you. In person with the Empress, Sejal. What does that tell you?”

“That she’s—” And then I stopped, my Jesse instincts screaming at me to shut up. People love to talk. After I gave a jobber a mind-shattering orgasm, some of them would get weepy and want to blab about this or that. I was always surprised about what they were willing to tell a complete stranger. Why did they want to blather so much? After I broke down and cried in the restaurant with Kendi, I could kind of understand it, but Kendi had saved my life. Twice. This guy was a total stranger I didn’t owe anything. So I shut up.

It didn’t stop my mind from racing, though. Assuming Sufur wasn’t lying—and my gut was said he was telling the truth—what did Mother Ara meeting with the Empress tell me?

It told me that Harenn was right. I was important, everyone wanted a part of me, and they’d rather I was dead than end up with someone else.

When I didn’t say anything, Sufur went on. “If you stay here, Sejal, they’ll kill you.”

The room was quiet. The French doors were still closed, keeping out the sound of breezes in the tree, though I saw green leaves fluttering beyond the glass. Footsteps trotted past my door and faded. I forced myself to think clearly before I said anything.

“You said if Ara decided I was a danger to the Independence Confederation, she was supposed to do it. How do you know she’s decided I’m a danger?”

“Premier Yuganovi is very upset that you slipped away.” Sufur calmly smoothed his trousers, as if he had said the weather would change. “The Unity’s going to declare war.”

“War? Over me?”

Sufur nodded. “You’re the most valuable piece of property in history. You possess the power to topple empires and destroy governments. The Unity wants you to work for them. The Empress wants you to work for the Independence Confederation. Other governments will want you as well. Empress Kalii isn’t stupid. She’ll see—has seen—that that she’ll be fighting wars she can’t possibly win. Sure, after a few years of training you’ll probably be able to wipe out entire civilizations, but the Empress has to deal with the Unity
now.”

“You’re exaggerating,” I said. “I couldn’t wipe out a civilization.”

“You could make one person push all the right buttons and easily do the job,” Sufur countered.

“I’d never do something like that!”

“The Empress doesn’t know that. Premiere Yuganovi doesn’t know that. And people change, Sejal. Who knows what you’ll do in six years, or even six months, given the proper conditioning?” He crossed his arms. “No, Sejal. You’re too dangerous for any government to let you live for long.”

I started to protest. Kendi wouldn’t hurt me. The Children of Irfan had saved me, gone through a lot of trouble for me, even died for me. They wouldn’t kill me after all that.

But my Jesse voice was whispering other things. Would they have come for me if it weren’t for my special Silence? Would they have offered to take me off-planet if I were normal? Would Kendi have saved my life if I’d been an ordinary tricker like Jesse? I knew the answer. It wasn’t me they wanted. It was my power.

I was starting to tear up, which made me mad. “Okay, so I believe you. What do
you
want? And don’t give me any bullshit that you want to save my life.”

Sufur chuckled. “Oh no, young Sejal. Unlike the Children and the Unity, I won’t lie to you or pretend I’m talking to you for anything but selfish reasons. All humans are selfish. I’m just willing to admit it.”

“Okay, then. Talk.”

“Come with me. I’ll give you sanctuary and I’ll pay you well.” He sounded like a jobber again.

“And what do you want me to do?”

Sufur wet his lips as if he were nervous. “I want you to end war.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Just like that, huh? You want me to end war?”

“You can do it, Sejal,” Sufur said seriously. “Or at least,
we
can do it.”

“How?” I asked, deciding to play along.

“What would happen,” he said, “if there was a war and nobody came?”

Now I was getting nervous again. Sufur was starting to sound like a jay-head who’d had too much juice. “I don’t know,” I stalled.

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s a rhetorical question. Look, you can possess people. More than one at a time?”

I nodded despite the earlier advice from my Jesse voice.

“What if you got into a war, possessed the soldiers on both sides, and stopped them from fighting? What if you possessed the commanders and made them give surrender orders? What if you possessed the government leaders and made them sign peace treaties?”

“It’d work at first,” I said, “until I let go. Then everyone would be back to fighting again.”

“Not if they knew that you’d possess them again. And again and again until they gave it up.”

“I’m one person,” I protested. “I couldn’t possibly do all that.”

“You wouldn’t need to.” Sufur grinned like a cat. “It would only take the threat that you
might
do it. The Unity is willing to go to war over the mere threat that you
might
do something it doesn’t like, right?”

“That’s what you said.”

“And they’re declaring war because you’re, in theory, aligning yourself with the Independence Confederation.”

“Right,” I said, wondering exactly where this was going.

“I’m not aligned with
any
government.” He thumped himself on the chest. “If you come with me, the Unity—and everyone else—won’t have a reason to declare war. You’ll be neutral—and in a position to stop other wars from breaking out later.”

I shook my head. This was a lot of information coming at me all at once. I wandered over the French doors, and opened them a crack. Fresh, cool air blew into the room. I poked my head outside. A small group of other students, most of them older than me, were talking a ways up the common balcony. Good. If had to yell for help or make a fast exit, someone would hear me. I felt calmer now. Sufur didn’t seem to be a whack-head, but you can never tell for sure.

“Look,” Sufur said from my bed, “do you know what happened to your mother and father when the Unity invaded Rust?”

I turned. “What do you know about them?”

“I’ve done my research,” he said. “Your parents are Prasad and Vidya Vajhur, though your mother later changed her name to Dasa. They ran a small cattle farm not far from the city of Ijhan. When the Unity invaded, it dropped biological weapons that wiped out Rust’s food supply. Famine spread everywhere. Your parents, like a lot of people, headed for the city, hoping to find relief. There was none. A sea of people starving to death in their own filth and sewage surrounded Ijhan, and your parents were among them. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died thanks to the Unity’s little war.”

“Where did you hear this?” I demanded, though I wanted to hear more. This was the stuff Mom never talked about.

“Your parents, however,” Sufur continued as if I hadn’t said anything, “did not die. They knew that they carried the genes for Silence, though they weren’t Silent themselves. When their position became hopeless, they signed a contract with Silent Acquisitions, Inc.”

“I know that,” I interrupted. “How do
you
know it?”

“I told you—I have many contacts.” He took out a white silk handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. Did I make him nervous? “Later, the Unity took over your parents’ contract and forced them to hand over their first two children.”

“I know that, too,” I interrupted. “So what?”

“War destroyed your family, Sejal. It starved them and forced your parents to give your brothers away. War allowed the Unity to conquer your homeworld and drain it dry. Because of war, you were forced to live in an impoverished slum all your life.”

“More contacts?” I said.

Sufur nodded. “More contacts. You’ll have to get used it, I’m afraid. Word about you is already spreading. No matter what choices you make, your life will under constant scrutiny.” He stood up and leaned against the door frame. “Ultimately, it all comes down to this, Sejal: Araceil Rymar has been ordered to kill you. The Empress gave her the order before either of them had even met you. Even if Araceil decides to let you live—and I very much doubt that will happen—do you really want to stay in a place where such orders are given so casually?”

I didn’t answer because there was only one to give. Suddenly I was angry again. Earlier today things were looking good. I had new clothes, my own place to live, and people who liked me. This jay-head was taking it all away.

“Why the hell should I go with you?” I snapped. “I don’t have any proof of who you are or what you’ll do to me once I leave. How do I know
you
haven’t been sent to kill me?”

Sufur raised his hands, and I realized I had pretty much said I was going to leave. “You have the power to make me do—or not do—anything you want. How could I hurt you? And if I were going to kill you, wouldn’t I just do it instead of talking all this time?”

I thought about it for a while. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay.

“Can Kendi come?” I said before I could stop myself.

“Do you really think he’d want to?”

I thought about it. “No,” I sighed.

“Let’s go then,” Sufur said gently. “I have a ship.”

And then my Jesse personality spoke up. Always get the money up front. “We haven’t talked terms yet.”

Sufur smiled. “Altruism isn’t enough?”

If he was thinking I didn’t know what
altruism
meant, he was wrong. “I can’t eat altruism. And you don’t look exactly hungry yourself.”

“Fair enough.” He scratched his head. “How about this, then. Just to show you I mean what I say, I’ll give you a salary and no duties. You do what you want. If you don’t like what’s going on, you can take your money and leave, no strings attached.”

I eyed him with heavy suspicion. “What’s the catch?”