Steven Harper - Dreamer

“A safe place,” Vidya repeated softly. Her face softened. “Yes. I can understand.”

A moment of quiet fell over the room. Prasad’s stomach growled, and he became aware of the smell of honey bread still hanging on the air. They should eat. They could eat together as a family for the first time in seventeen years.

Was Sejal, his son, eating breakfast now?

“They are in pain,” Katsu spoke up.

“Who is?” Prasad asked absently.

“The children in the Nursery.”

“How do you know this, my daughter?” Vidya said. Her voice was calm and soothing. A mother’s voice.

“I dance with them in the Dream,” Katsu replied. “Then they don’t eat so much.”

“Eat?” Prasad said, his mind still on breakfast. Did Katsu mean the children wanted to eat with them?

“They don’t eat other people.”

Prasad snapped to full attention at this. The hackles rose on his neck. “Katsu, what do you mean?”

“The children hunger for the touch of minds denied them in the womb and in the Dream,” Katsu said. “They hurt and they are angry. I dance for them sometimes, and that calms them for a while, but they still hunger. And when they eat, they make many people despondent. Sometimes these people die.”

And with that she fell silent.

“You must explain more, daughter.” Vidya put her hand on Katsu’s shoulder. “You must tell us what you mean.”

But Katsu only rose and went into her room. The door shut softly behind her. Vidya watched her go with puzzled eyes.

“She is always like this,” Prasad ventured. “Sometimes I think she says so little because she expects the rest of us to follow her reasoning, even when we lack the intelligence.”

Vidya rose as well. “I think my husband needs to show me these other children.”

“I think,” Prasad said, pushing himself up from his chair, “my wife is correct.”

Dr. David Kri was murmuring to a computer pad in his hand before the clear barrier in the Nursery. He was in his early middle years, blocky and short, with pale hair, red cheeks, and narrow green eyes. Beside him stood Max Garinn studying the spiky lines crossing a readout monitor and twirling his blond mustache. In the Nursery itself, several of the dark-haired children twitched and convulsed. Their mouths opened and shut, as did their brown eyes. Saliva dribbled down several chins. Vidya stared, her face pale.

“My husband,” she whispered. “They look like you.”

Prasad opened his mouth to deny this, then swallowed the words. The time for denial was over. Vidya was correct, and he knew it, had always known it. Just because he had never looked up the records stating which children had received his DNA did not mean the knowledge was hidden. Vidya was forcing him to look, and now he would see.

Dr. Kri looked up from his pad. His eyes widened at Vidya. “What the hell?” he sputtered. “Prasad, what is she doing here? This is a restricted area!”

“Vidya must see everything before she decides whether or not to join the project,” Prasad replied calmly.

“And I will join,” Vidya put in. “I find this fascinating.”

Prasad stared. Vidya ignored this and turned to Max Garinn. “But first,” she said, pointing at him, “you must answer my questions.”

Garinn turned the monitor off. “Go ahead.”

“You told me you could change my son Sejal so he would not be Silent,” Vidya said flatly. “You lied. My son is Silent, a powerful Silent.”

“He’s the one the Unity was looking for?” Dr. Kri said, astonished. His voice was rich and mellow. “And you’re his mother?”

“Yes.”

Wild anticipation mixed with amazement and…hunger? on Dr. Kri’s face. Prasad could almost see the wheels turning in the man’s head.

“I told you I had an experimental process,” Garinn corrected, still twirling his mustache. Prasad wanted to snatch his hand away from it. “I told you my viruses would change him right down to his stem cell DNA. I made no promises, and I gave you money. The process obviously worked. Your son came up negative on both scans for Silent genes, so there must have been enough change made to fool the Unity. What are you complaining about? No one came to take him when he was ten years old.”

“But he is still Silent,” Vidya insisted, her voice a cold, deadly calm. “Did you do that on purpose? I need to know.”

Garinn shook his head. “No. It was an unanticipated side-effect.”

He turned the readout monitor back on. Beyond him, one of the Nursery children abruptly went limp just as another went into another fit of spasmodic behavior. Vidya looked like she wanted to say more, then apparently thought the better of it.

“You’ll join us, then?” Dr. Kri’s eyes gleamed and he clapped his hands once under his chin. “That’s wonderful! What we could do-it boggles the mind. I mean, Prasad’s DNA alone gave us this.” He gestured at the twitching bodies in the Nursery, and a wave of shame swept over Prasad. “If we combine it with yours, well-we may bring this project to conclusion in only a few more years.”

“I will, of course, require compensation,” Vidya said thoughtfully. She leaned against a desk. “I will have the same benefits you are giving Prasad, plus a salary twenty percent higher than his and a twelve thousand kesh signing bonus.”

Dr. Kri smiled. “Oh dear. We aren’t made of money, you know. Our…sponsor does well by us, but still-”

“Yes, I see,” Vidya said, waving a hand. “Very well. I shall gather my things, then, and leave you to arrange my transportation back to-”

“Now, now,” Dr. Kri interrupted, his rich voice taking on a silky edge. “I didn’t exactly say no.”

Vidya finally settled for a salary twelve percent higher than Prasad’s and an eight thousand kesh bonus. Prasad shook his head. Why was she bargaining? They were going to leave, weren’t they? He knew he couldn’t stay. Now that he could see the place through Vidya’s eyes, every moment spent in the Nursery made him more and more uncomfortable, more and more ashamed.

After the dickering ended, Vidya turned to Prasad. “Perhaps my husband will help me unpack?”

She took him firmly by the elbow and all but towed him away from the Nursery. The moment they had cleared the labs, Prasad turned to her.

“What was that about? Why did you say you would stay? I thought-”

“We are staying,” Vidya said in a voice that brooked no argument, “until we can figure out what to do about those children.”

PLANET CONFEDERATION’S CORE PALACE OF HER MOST AUGUST AND IMPERIAL MAJESTY EMPRESS KAN MAJA KALII

“War?” Ara exclaimed.

Empress Kan maja Kalii nodded. The jewels hovering about her head bobbed like confused fireflies for a moment before settling back into their normal orbits. Although it was early morning for Ara, it was night on this part of Confederation’s Core, and the Empress was holding audience in a great alabaster hall with a cathedral ceiling and white marble floors. The Empress herself sat on a simple gray throne on a raised platform. Lamps glowed with cold light, and the windows were shut tight against darkness and spies. The only people in the room were Ara, Grandfather Melthine, and the Empress herself, though Ara and Melthine were actually possessing the bodies of a pair of Silent slaves. They currently knelt on large pillows near the base of the Empress’s platform.

“Premier Yuganovi’s personal Silent delivered the ultimatum moments ago,” the Empress said. “The Empire of Human Unity resents the kidnaping of Sejal Dasa on the Confederation’s behalf. If Sejal is not returned immediately, the Unity will declare war.”