Steven Harper - Nightmare

"We don’t have all the facts yet," Kendi replied lamely. "I think we should keep an open mind. Besides, who knows what Mother Ara’s finding out at Dreamers, Inc.?"

Jeren’s only reply was a sarcastic snort.

The day proved difficult. Thoughts of Ben mingled with thoughts of Dorna-Violet? — and he ached to talk to Ara about the whole thing. Maybe after classes were over he could drop into the Dream, see if she was there. There was a way to reach out of the Dream to contact Silent in the solid world, something Ara called knocking , but Kendi hadn’t learned how to do that yet. Maybe he could figure out how it worked?

With a start he realized that someone had repeated his name. Sister Bren stood over his desk, her young face waiting expectantly.

"What?" he asked.

"Kendi, I do get tired of repeating questions to you," she said. "Please pay attention."

"Sorry," he muttered.

"I asked you what other gift the Ched-Balaar gave humanity. The Dream was one. What was the other."

For once, Kendi remembered the answer. "Gravity," he said. "They gave us gravity generators."

"Absolutely correct," Bren said. "Before the Ched-Balaar, all human ships either operated in freefall or they had to simulate gravity how?"

"By spinning," Kite said without raising his hand.

Bren nodded. "An inconvenient way to travel, to say the least. Now, I’ve uploaded a new program onto the student network. Take out your pads and open the file named-"

But Kendi’s mind was already wandering again.

At last classes ended for the day. He was about to go with the others back to the dormitory when he noticed Willa splitting off in another direction.

"Where are you headed?" he asked.

Willa held up her dermospray. "I’m empty, remember? I have to go the dispensary."

"I’ll go with you," Kendi said on impulse.

They walked in silence for a while, feet tromping the swaying walkways. Almost idly Kendi noticed that Willa wasn’t quite so thin anymore. Her features weren’t nearly as sharp, and her hair, formerly dull as dishwater, had taken on a distinct sheen. Her posture was straighter, and although she showed nothing of the overconfident cockiness of Jeren, she carried herself with more ease.

"You like it here, don’t you?" Kendi said.

"I love it," she declared without hesitation. Her voice was much firmer than it had been a year ago. "Everything about this place is beautiful and fine."

She paused in her walking to peer over the walkway. The lush green growth below trapped the clean scent of last night’s rain and were slowly releasing it even in the late afternoon. Humans and Ched-Balaar, all wearing the medallions of Irfan, strolled up and down balconies and walkways, words mixing pleasantly with clatters and hoots. A gondola sailed past, filled with a human couple and their children. Above them and below, giant buildings and tiny houses nestled discretely among the solid talltree branches as if they had grown there. It felt more like a vacation paradise than a monastery of thousands set into a city of over half a million.

"It’s beautiful," Willa continued. "I know there are dreadful things going on in the Dream and in the solid world-we saw that last night-but I still feel the serenity of the place. It’s like Irfan is watching over us. I feel calm here."

"You had it hard as a slave," Kendi said.

Willa’s face clouded, then cleared. "I did. I had three masters, and every one of them left a mark on me. They changed my name and they tried to change my own self. So I buried it-my own self, I mean. I buried it so deep I couldn’t find it again. This place has helped me dig it back out."

"Was Willa your birth name?" Kendi said. "I never asked."

Willa shook her head. "My name was Janet. Willa was the name my last master gave me. By the time Ara bought and freed me, I had had that name longer than any other, so I decided to keep it. You changed yours again, I know."

"The Real People take names that describe them and change them whenever they need to," Kendi said. "But I think I’ll be a kendi for a long time."

They continued on their way to the student dispensary. It was nothing more than a middle-sized room with seven service windows along the back wall. A sign said Please form a single line, and a series of ropes indicated the direction the line was to take. Because classes had ended for the day, there were several people already waiting, and all seven windows were staffed. After several minutes, Kendi and Willa reached the front and were beckoned toward a window. A male clerk sat behind it.

"Name?" he asked.

Willa gave it and handed over her dermospray. The clerk tapped several keys on his computer and the holographic screen flickered.

"You’ve been practicing quite a lot," he said. "No wonder you need a refill. Hold on a sec."

He popped the dermospray into a slot and tapped the computer again. A slight hissing sound whispered across the counter and a light on the dermospray winked green. The clerk pulled it free and handed it back to Willa.

"A dozen doses," he said. "Thumb here and you’re all set."

Willa pressed her thumb to the plate. Kendi stared at it and something clicked inside his head. His heart jumped.

"All life!" he gasped. "All life-that’s what it is!"

Willa looked at him. "What’s what it is?"

"Do you have the records of all the doses that everyone uses?" Kendi asked the clerk, voice urgent.

"Well, yeah," the clerk replied, startled. "The microtransmitter alerts the dispensary whenever a student uses a dose so your teacher can keep track of how much independent-"

"Can you show me the records for another student?" Kendi asked.

The clerk looked shocked. "Certainly not. That’s confidential information."

"It’s a matter of life and death," Kendi said, almost jumping up and down. "Please, you have to show me."

The clerk tapped his computer and the screen vanished. "Not without authorization I don’t. Listen, son, there are people behind you."

"But-"

"Next!" the clerk said pointedly.

Kendi bit his lip in frustration. Several students in the waiting area were eyeing him curiously, but he barely noticed. Abruptly he grabbed Willa’s hand.

"What’s going on?" she demanded. "Where are we going?"

He said, "To find Father Ched-Hisak."

The tiny Guardian ship popped out of slipspace a respectable fifty thousand kilometers from the space station headquarters of Dreamers, Inc. Alarms beeped and Tan’s fingers darted dextrously over the boards, informing the station who they were and that they did indeed have permission to hold their current position. Ara, meanwhile, radioed the docking authority to double-check their authorization. Everything was in order, as were the reservations for their accommodations. Ara relaxed, only then realizing that she had been worried that some bureaucratic snafu would strand them without a place to dock or sleep.

"Docking in two hours," Tan reported from the pilot’s chair.

Ara nodded and punched up an external visual on her monitor. It was a relief to see stars and blackness out there instead of the nauseating whirl of slipspace. The Guardian slipship was cramped and tiny-the bridge was barely big enough for two people-and there was little to do on board. Fortunately the little ship was also fast. That and good slipspace conditions had gotten them to the station in just under eighteen hours.

Ara trained one of the cameras on the station and beefed up the magnification, more for something to do than anything else. The station orbited an ocean-covered planet with a few flyspeck islands and wide swaths of white clouds, and the thing was a real hodgepodge. Giant squares and enormous spheres were stuck together or connected by cylinders like tinkertoys assembled by a madman. The entire station probably massed as much as a small moon. Ships of varying sizes drifted, darted, or lumbered through open spaces. Ara shook her head. She hadn’t visited Dreamers, Inc., in over three years, but the station had rearranged itself in even that short time so that she barely recognized it. Dreamers had more money than even a multi-system corporation could burn, and Ara suspected the corp conducted the almost continual redecoration simply because it could.