Steven Harper - Dreamer

A thousand marks painstakingly scratched into the stone stood for the passage of a thousand years. Kendi also felt it stood for the loss of a thousand Real People. The next picture showed slipships, invented while Kendi’s family and the other colonists slept, overtaking the slower-than-light colony ship and landing at Pelagosa to set up colonies of their own. Governments rose and fell back on Earth, and people forgot about the dozens of colony ships still patiently coasting through space.

Another picture. A slipship crept up to the colony vessel. Slavers boarded and took control. A line of chained Real People trudged up to the auction block.

Another picture. Kendi’s owner gave him a blood test and discovered Kendi was Silent, a term Kendi had never heard before. The man put Kendi up for resale at a quick profit.

Another picture. A short, round woman touched Kendi’s shoulder. Kendi entered the monastery on Bellerophon, entered the Dream, studied navigation and piloting.

Met Ben.

Kendi gave himself a shake. He hadn’t come down here to meander through the past. A pile of roots and other plant material lay near a water bag. Kendi chewed different roots and mixed the resulting paste with water on a flat stone until he had a palate of several colors. Using his fingers, he drew figures on the wall with the cooling paint. He detailed his arrival on Rust, the time in the market, his encounter with the strange boy.

The Unity guard.

Kendi’s hands trembled and he faltered before he could draw the details of his arrest. The cave wall was chilly beneath his fingertips. Abruptly, he felt restless, hemmed in by the cave. He had to get out, get out now. He shook the paint from his hands, trotted out of the side cave into the main cavern, and danced his way up the spiral to the outside world.

The Outback spread before him, free and wide and open. Hot air moved over his body. The falcon screamed a greeting and Kendi waved. Voices, many more than normal, buzzed and whispered on the wind, but Kendi ignored them. The falcon plunged to earth and changed into a kangaroo. Kendi whooped and took off running, long legs flying over the sandy earth. The kangaroo bounded alongside, easily keeping pace. Kendi ran and ran beneath the pure golden sun.

A slight vibration tremored under his soles. Kendi instantly halted. The earth was shaking. The kangaroo shifted back into falcon shape and took off screaming for the skies. Tiny stones danced around Kendi’s toes and his bones vibrated. Before he could react further, the ground ahead of him cracked and split with a sound like a hundred thunderstorms. Earth dropped down into the crevice, as if the supporting ground had vanished. Kendi backpedaled, heart pounding, adrenaline singing through his veins. He should leave immediately, but letting go of the Dream took a certain amount of concentration, impossible to achieve when the earth beneath his feet was crumbing into nothing. Kendi managed to spin and sprint. The crumbling ground followed him. Earth loosened beneath his soles, and Kendi forced himself to put on an extra burst of speed.

He felt the minds as he ran.

Thousands of mental voices cried out as the earth shifted and fell away. Each particle of earth, each stone and pebble, was Kendi’s symbol for the minds that made up the Dream, and so many of them plummeted into the cracked ground. Kendi had no time to wonder what was happening to them. He could only run.

The tremors stopped. Kendi slowed his pace and cautiously turned. Earth and air lay perfectly still. The falcon circled in the sky above Kendi’s head. He caught his breath in stunned amazement. About fifty paces behind Kendi stretched a wide canyon, one so wide, Kendi could barely make out the opposite side.

Warily, Kendi crept on hands and knees to the edge of the canyon and peered downward. Nausea rocked him, and he flung himself flat on his stomach so he could feel the solid ground beneath him. The bottom was far away, and it was a seething black. Kendi couldn’t tear his eyes away. The canyon had no floor. Instead, a roiling blackness shifted and quivered. Uncertain tendrils crawled up the canyon walls like hungry tentacles before sliding back down again. The smell of rotting meat and moist graveyard dirt wafted upward. Then a long, low wail made of a hundred voices keened upward. The sound tore across Kendi’s nerves like icy fingernails. Kendi clapped his hands over his ears and forced himself to roll away from the canyon’s edge. The wail and smell faded, but the canyon remained.

Kendi lay panting on his back. The heat pressed down on him, and he let it bake the fear away. He could never cross that canyon, even if he could manage to create a bridge long enough. Not with that reaching, wailing blackness below.

“In the name of all life,” he whispered to the sky, “what is it?”

He rolled to a sitting position at what he hoped was a safe distance from the canyon. This was not good. Travel and distance in the Dream were based completely on the perceptions of the Silent. This meant that Kendi would not be able to talk to any Silent who, in Kendi’s mind, lay on the other side of the canyon. Kendi’s forehead furrowed. The canyon did not exist. There was nothing ahead of him but rough Outback terrain.

The canyon remained.

Voices of other Silent babbled on the breeze, and Kendi knew they were experiencing the same thing he was. He considered trying to contact someone to ask if they knew what had happened and why, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he stretched his senses, searching for signs of the boy.

Nothing. Kendi drummed nervous fingers on his thigh. That didn’t seem right. The canyon was still there, which meant that the person who had created it must still be in the Dream. If the boy-Kendi’s nephew-was causing the problem, he should still be in the Dream, and Kendi should be able to feel his thought patterns. But he felt nothing.

Kendi picked up a handful of dirt and let it trickle hypnotically through his fingers. They had to find the boy and Kendi had to know if he was a relative. The idea that his family was still out there somewhere, treated as property and denied their place as free citizens used to make him frantic with worry. Over time, that had become a part of him, a desire carved into his soul like a stream carving its bed through rock. Kendi reached for another handful of earth, and his hand closed over something hard and cylindrical. Startled, he looked down.

It was an iron bar.

“Tattoos! Color yourself with a tatoo!”

“Come see my dresses! You, madam-I have just the thing for you!”

A crate of chickens clucked passers-by and a baker’s pans clattered as she set out her sweet-smelling wares. A light haze over the sun kept the air balmy and pleasant. In the center of an intersection stood a marble statue of Premier Yuganovi, leader of the Unity. Ara stood out of the flow of traffic, ignoring merchants and scanning faces. Somewhere out in that mess were Trish, Pitr, Gretchen, and Harenn, all armed with Kendi’s composite. She wished they could show the boy’s picture around and make inquiries, but she didn’t want word to reach the kid that someone was looking for him. He’d probably drop into a hole somewhere and they’d never find him.

Ara flicked another glance at the image on her ocular implant. Kendi’s composite was good, and it shouldn’t be hard to miss this kid. On the other hand, they were talking about a city of several million people, thousands of whom were in the marketplace. Ara tried to scan the faces in her immediate vicinity without appearing to stare. Even though there was a good chance the computer would spot the boy before she did, Ara couldn’t help but look. Around her swirled the sounds and smells of the crowded market. Meat sizzled on open-air grills, chains clattered on old-fashioned pedal bicycles, and people shouted to one another in a cacophony Ara would have found delightful if she hadn’t been so worried.