Watchstar (10 page)

She opened her eyes ... were they her eyes? She looked at the darkening sky; she was where she had been. The Net held her, then lifted her up, propelling her along the route she had taken, back to the others. She felt the air billow around her. The wind stung her face; she shielded her eyes. The air shrieked past her ears. Then she was moving more slowly, held in the air by the minds of all the Merging Ones.

She dipped toward the desert and was deposited gently on the sand. She knelt, still clutching her sack. Her fingers were stiff. She let go of the sack, keeping her mind still. She looked around; she was still far from the others, with at least a day's travel before she would see them again.

The Net tugged at her. Its strands contracted. It lifted from her. Daiya clawed at the air, seeing the Net glow around her; she touched it with her mind. It spun, becoming a bright fiery disk, whipping her with the tendrils that surrounded it ... and then it was gone.

Daiya screamed. Her voice was swallowed by emptiness, yet in her mind she heard her scream multiply, break apart, become other voices. The others were screaming too. She fell against the sack, curling up near it. The Net was gone.

She was alone.

Daiya got to her feet. It was growing dark, the evening light making the desert purple. She tied the sack to her back. Cautiously, she lifted herself from the ground, held herself aloft for a few seconds, then fell. Her mind was weak without the Net. There was an invisible wall around her. This, she thought, must be what that boy feels all the time. She trembled; her teeth clicked against one another. Her body had shrunk in upon itself.

She began to walk. The sack shifted on her shoulders. She stumbled along; her legs felt as though they had been grafted on to her, carrying her against her will. She sent out a mental feeler, trying to locate another mind, Harel's or Mausi's or even Peloren's. Her mind followed the feeler, stretching out into a long thin thread, and she gasped, pulling it back quickly. She was too weak; she would lose her mind, could not bring it back easily without the Net. She found herself wondering if she should rest, and shuddered. She would go on, even if she had to wait for the others where they were to meet. She would not stay out here alone.

The desert was growing darker. A mist clung to her, a dry, gray mist. Her vision blurred. The distant horizon vanished. She stopped, looking around frantically. The ground she stood on was an island. Blackness was swallowing the desert, rolling toward her, closing in on her like a cylindrical wall. She began to run, then forced herself to slow to a walk. She stopped.

She stood still as the sky and earth were swallowed and the darkness pressed in around her. She looked through her eyes and saw nothing. She wiggled her toes inside her moccasins and felt only the leather; she could be standing on air. She felt dizzy, unable to balance. She thought she heard a scream. She took a breath. Air filled her lungs.

She tried to think: I'm still breathing, that means that there's air. She reached out carefully with one foot and took a small step, her muscles tightening as she prepared for a fall into an abyss. She did not fall. She had to be standing on something.

Daiya stepped forward slowly, then halted again. She could not know where she was going; she was beginning to forget where she was. She tried to stand still. She was a speck in a vast space. She put out her arms, unable to tell whether they stretched in front of her or were out at her sides. Reality was bounded by her skin; she was vast, as large as the world, as the universe.

Her mind pressed against the nothingness; there was nothing to grasp, nothing to push aside. The shriek began again, filling her head, filling the world. She wanted to strike out, tear at everything, do anything that would restore the world outside. There's nothing to tear at, she thought, except myself.

She felt terror; fear twisted her heart and stopped her breath. She was fragmenting; her arms stretched into impossibly long limbs, her hands were paces away. Her legs were monoliths, solid, unmoving. Her feet were as far below her as a hut from the sky. Her torso was breaking away from her limbs; her head hung above her body.

She gasped and doubled over. She fell to her knees, clasping her legs with her arms, pressing her head against her thighs. She was a ball of dust clinging to the bottom of a vast black plain. The world tilted and she was clinging to the side of a cliff. Her stomach shifted and she felt nauseated. A bitter taste filled her mouth.

She shielded her mind, trying to reason. She had to go on; even moving through the nothingness would be better than this. She took a breath carefully, believing for a moment that only nothingness would fill her lungs. There was still air around her. The darkness had to be an illusion.

She rose, balancing carefully on her feet. She took a step. There was ground beneath her, even though she could not feel it. She concentrated on that, trying to sense the earth. She took another step and felt solidity. She walked slowly, arms out, feeling as though she was on a rope stretched between two trees. She opened her eyes. The nothingness was grayer, not as dark.

She thought: I must find the others. She reached out, sensing only a faint cry; she could not touch them. The grayness became a fog. She walked through it, still unable to sense distance, wondering if she was going in the right direction; she saw herself wandering off, trapped somewhere far from the others. No, she told herself, I'm facing the way I should go, it doesn't matter, the fog will clear and I'll see where I am. The grayness clung to her, as thick as ever.

A voice spoke to her from deep inside her head: This is nothingness, this is separateness, you are already dead and apart from the Merged One. She cried out, wondering if that was true, if she was struggling for no reason. She would walk on, and at the end there would be only oblivion. She trembled, wondering which would be worse, finding oblivion or struggling through the thick fog forever. I'm not dead, she told herself, I'm not dead, and if I were, it wouldn't matter whether I thought I was or wasn't, so I must believe I'm alive.

She pressed on, hearing another shriek more clearly. She could not tell whether it was inside her or outside. The shriek rose and broke, scattered by the fog. She kept moving, trying to remember her mental disciplines, her training, all of which seemed useless to her now. She shuddered, and tried to control herself. Look with your eyes, she told herself, hear with your ears, see what is there.

She looked down at her feet. Beneath the cloudy fog, she thought she saw dirt and sand. She looked up and caught a glimpse of sky. She walked more quickly now, afraid to slow down. She called to Harel, trying to find him, searching through the masses of mist. She heard an echoing cry.

The grayness grew lighter. Ahead, she saw a small dark shape. She approached it and stretched out a hand. She felt a prickliness and drew back. A cactus. She trembled with relief. Slowly the cactus took shape, green and solid. She fell down next to it and sobbed until she was exhausted.

She lay very still, eyes closed as she rested. At last she looked up. The fog was receding; the sky was growing lighter. The sun was beginning to rise. Her muscles were stiff. She glanced around her, suddenly realizing how far she had traveled in the night. She tried to orient herself, and found she was not far from where she was to meet the others.

Daiya rose, stamping her sore, blistered feet. She moved on, almost expecting the desert to disappear again. It remained, arid and empty, growing warmer in the morning light. Tiny figures moved in the distance, coming closer to her. She moved more quickly, then began to run, ignoring her aches and blisters, calling to the others mentally. Then her legs gave way and she pitched forward. The earth hit her and she lay still, drained and tired. The weight of the sack pushed against her shoulders, holding her down.

She forced herself up again and staggered on, watching the others grow a bit larger. She fell again, and rested on her side. She untied her sack and let it slip off her back. Exhausted, she waited.

As her companions drew nearer, Daiya noticed that there were only five of them. She squinted, unable at first to tell who was missing. One crumpled and lay on the ground, blonde hair against the earth: Mausi. The bulky Tasso continued to move on thick legs. Peloren weaved along, swaying back and forth; Harel strode, shoulders slumped. Oren lurched along, his head rising and falling with each step. Sude was absent.

—Sude—Daiya called. Harel caught the name and shook his head. She swept the area, trying to sense where Sude was. The others began to drop, paces away, their faces indistinct, their thoughts attenuated.—Sude—she called again.

—He's dead—someone answered. The thought pierced her. She shook her head, denying it silently.

—He's dead—Peloren had said it. She looked toward the girl.—I can't find him—Peloren went on.—I can't feel him anywhere, he's gone—

Daiya clasped her hands together and drew them to her chest. Sude had been right; he had seen his death approaching. She had been wrong. She tried to imagine how he must have felt when the darkness surrounded him, and wondered if he had died cursing her. He's with the Merged One, she told herself, if I had let him go before, he would have died condemned. The words seemed hollow, only a feeble way to justify what she had done.

Peloren rose and began to weave her way toward Daiya, her sun-streaked hair bobbing against her shoulders. There was blood on the front of her tunic, a bruise on her forehead, holes in the knees of her trousers. A wave of despair rushed from her mind, sweeping over Daiya. She was inside Peloren for a moment, stumbling through the black nothingness, tearing at herself to make sure she was still alive, mind raging out of control. Peloren, she realized, was still trapped in the darkness, still seeing it. She was bleeding badly, unable to make the blood clot. Daiya pulled her mind away.

—Sit down, rest—Daiya cried. Peloren stood still, her eyes looking about wildly. Then she fixed her eyes on Daiya, as if seeing through the darkness at last. Her hatred burned.

—The Net's gone—Peloren's mind wailed.—We're all alone, we're finished. It's all your fault, you with your separateness and your visions—

Daiya threw up her wall.

—It's too late for that—Peloren went on.—You saw an illusion, oh, yes, I know you did. You gave in to it, you shook the Net, and now it's gone—

Daiya trembled behind her wall. It couldn't be true. The Net was gone from all of them, not just her. It was part of the ordeal, it had to be. She considered that; why would the village isolate them, force them into isolation and into a reliance on individual strengths, in order to see who was best suited to become part of the community? It seemed a contradiction.

She tried to get up. She could not move. Peloren held her; she was pounding against her wall, ready to tear it apart. She felt rage; she longed to strike out at Peloren. Her wall shook and crumbled. Lightning leaped from the other girl, stabbing Daiya. She screamed and reinforced the wall; if she lashed out, she would die. She would expose herself to Peloren's anger and might accidentally harm her companion; the trip back had weakened the other girl more. Peloren was battering against her; she could not even cry out for help.

Her wall held. Someone else was aiding her defense. She touched Harel's mind; he and the others were lending her some of their strength, weak as they were. She suppressed the urge to fight Peloren.

Her body was moving. Peloren was lifting her from the ground with her mind. Daiya resisted. She rose a few paces and hovered. Then she fell, bruising her knees.

Peloren was lying on the ground, hands out. Daiya reached out tentatively; the girl was unconscious. She hurried toward Peloren and knelt next to her, turning her over gently. She still bled; her mental field was weak and fading.

Daiya looked around frantically. Harel was coming toward her, his shoulders slouched. She reached out to him with her mind and clasped his. They wove themselves together and focused on Peloren, stanching the flow of blood. They reached inside her, trying to help her heal.

Peloren was slipping away. Daiya pulled at the others; Mausi was weak, Oren exhausted. She touched Tasso; he linked his mind with hers. Harel strained to hold Peloren, the girl was growing weaker even with the aid of Tasso's strength. Daiya longed for the Net. They were too weak without it; they would lose Peloren.

They reached deep inside the girl. She had no reserves left; they were gone, dispersed during her display of rage against Daiya. Her will had drowned in her despair. Peloren's mind drifted, slippery.

Suddenly she opened her eyes and stared calmly and hopelessly at Daiya for a moment.—Pray for me—she thought. The image of people praying was blurry and indistinct. She began to slip away.

Daiya clung to her; Tasso channelled more of his strength to the girl. Peloren still prayed, preparing herself for death.—You can't, you mustn't—Daiya thought.—Don't give up now, you can still fight it, you can live. We'll help you heal—

Peloren closed her eyes. Daiya was trapped with her in darkness. Peloren pulled her into the blackness. They were rushing down a dark tunnel, moving faster and faster, bound together. Ahead, Daiya saw something flicker briefly—a light, a mind. It was drawing them toward itself. She sighed with Peloren, content now, accepting their fate.

Suddenly Daiya was wrenched into daylight. Her mind floated above her; her body was sprawled on the ground. She pulled her mind inside herself and raised her head slowly. She knelt over Peloren. The body was still, the golden-streaked hair tangled in the dirt and dust. Harel was closing the eyes. Peloren was not there any more; she was gone.

Harel took her hand.—You almost died too, I didn't know if I could reach you in time—

She looked up, past his face, toward the sky. High above them, black birds were beginning to circle, awaiting more deaths. She shook her head.—We have to bury her—she murmured.—We can't leave her here, we have to bury her—

—Not now, we can't worry about that now—

—We have to find Sude—