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.
It wasn’t just that the boy’s power had been proven beyond any doubt or that Ara would have to decide whether he should live or die. She was also worried about Kendi. He had spent two weeks in a Unity prison and it was clear the experience had been horrifying. And in behavior that came straight from a psychology textbook, he refused to discuss it.
And as Irfan said, “The real world becomes the Dream,” Ara mused.
Maybe Ben could worm it out of him. She’d have to talk to him later about it. Right now, she had a job to do.
Ara patrolled the market, quickly establishing a pattern. She would find a vantage point and examine passing faces for several minutes, then move on to another spot. After three hours of steady walking, she paused to wolf down something bland and crunchy wrapped in soft bread for supper. Her calves and feet ached from all the walking, and she was sure bruises were forming on various parts of her body from elbows and knees of passers-by. One of the disadvantages of being short was that people tended to run over you if you weren’t careful. It was also damned difficult to get a good look at faces without standing on tiptoe.
Her implant flashed for her attention. Ara jerked her head to the right, and her implant drew a red outline around a figure just up the street. She caught her breath. Facial features, eyes, hair. He was even slouching against a wall like Kendi had reported. Ara tapped her earpiece.
“I’ve found our friend,” she subvocalized. “I’m looking right at him.”
“Where are you, Mother?” Pitr’s voice replied in her ear.
Ara looked around. She had no idea. There were no street signs or landmarks. “Not sure. There are a lot of people selling clothes and cloth around here, and I just passed several electronics merchants. I saw a statue of the Premier a while ago.”
“Hold on,” Pitr said. “Let me link up with Ben so we can figure out where everyone is.”
“I was just down where you are now, Mother,” Trish piped up. “You’re about four blocks from the red light district. I can be there in twenty minutes, if the crowd lets me.”
“I’ve got you all triangulated,” Ben’s voice broke in from the ship. “Gretchen’s closest. Go to your ocular implant, Gretchen, and I’ll overlay directions for you.”
Brief pause.
“Got ‘em” Gretchen said. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Hold it,” Ara said. “He’s moving. Stay linked everyone.”
The boy meandered down the street, hands in his ragged pockets. Ara dodged around an old man with a basket and hurried after him. Her lips pursed with determination. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight no matter what.
“You’re moving south, Mother,” Ben reported. “Gretchen, you’re coming in from the east. If you hurry, you might be able to get on the street ahead of him.”
“Dammit!” Gretchen snarled. Ara winced and put a hand to her ear. “One of those passenger bikes collided with a wheelbarrow. A crowd is gathering and I can’t get through.”
Ara twisted and ducked her way through the crowd and up the street. The boy had long legs, and his casual saunter was Ara’s brisk trot.
“You’re almost at the edge of the market, Mother,” Ben said. “You should be seeing regular streets soon.”
Ben was right. Up ahead, Ara made out ground cars zipping through an intersection. The boy reached the corner and stopped there. He took up his customary slouch against a wall. Ara halted as well and scrutinized the boy more closely. No electronic shackles clamped his wrists or ankles and he wore no collar around his neck. Ara cursed silently. Unless his master was extremely permissive, the boy was free. He would have to be persuaded, not bought.