Her head twisted like a doll’s head until she was looking toward me, at me alone. The touch of those sunken eyes was a blow. I shut my own eyes, not knowing what I was seeing, afraid to see it. I kept them shut for a long minute.
It was the light—the light playing tricks on me. When I looked at her again there was no ugliness, no suffering in that face. But there was a strangeness—something alien about its flat planes, the coloring, about the way her body fit together. Alien. I leaned forward, trying to meet her eyes. She looked at me, and they were green, impossibly, translucently green. Our eyes locked; in my mind I saw her seeing the same eyes, like jewels trapped in the matrix of a face that was too human, my face…
I read confusion, a silent cry in her look. She twisted her head away again, searching the crowd as if she needed a hiding place. But infinity was an illusion; the audience held her captive with its anticipation. I almost thought she shimmered, began to disappear…caught herself, in control again. Jule murmured something across from me, but I didn’t listen.
The Dreamweaver put her hands up to her face, but it was only a gesture, a sign of beginning. Something like a sigh moved through the crowd . . . something like a whisper formed in my mind. I shut my eyes again, trying to hear the image clearly: the soft, fragile-colored dream that echoed palely as a ghost in my mind’s darkness. I strained toward it, trying to make it clear, to share what made even the blind, deaf, and empty deadheads all around me gape and dream and squirm in their seats.
“Cat. Cat!”
I opened my eyes again, blinking; whispered, “Damn it, Jule—”
Her face twisted with pain. “I want to leave. I have to leave.”
I couldn’t focus on her; the echoes wouldn’t leave my mind alone, calling, promising—”I can feel her, I can almost—”
Jule put her hands to her head, and tears started in the corner of her eyes. “I can’t stand it, Cat. Please!”
Laughter rippled across us and through us: the cloudsitters, lost in another world, one I wanted to share so much it hurt.
“It hurts!” Jule gasped.
“Block it, then,” trying to keep my voice down, trying to ignore hers.
And suddenly she was gone. Into the air. “Jule!” The one or two people nearest me jerked and swore. I stared at the empty seat across from me. She’d teleported, she’d left me behind; she’d wanted to get away that much. Why? Why would she run from this? But the whispers were smokey and seductive now, I couldn’t keep my mind on her, couldn’t keep it away from them. . . .
The Dreamweaver held the room inside a spell for what seemed like hours, but wasn’t. A part of my own mind felt the passing of time, a dim clock marking seconds to the beating of my heart. My concentration and my need fell inward until I was as lost in seeking as the dreamers around me were lost inside themselves.
But dreams end, and the time came when the mindsong faded like dawn, growing fainter, paler, farther away . . . until all that was left to me was my own mind lying. The light in the room was brightening into sunrise; feeling it through my lids, I opened my eyes. The Dreamweaver was drowning in light until I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t see her, felt the light wash me with physical heat— And she was gone. The light imploded, left my eyes dancing with phosphenes. The other cloudsitters began to shake themselves out, murmuring and gesturing toward the empty center. There was no applause, no calling out for more. Dazed by glissen and drugged with wonder, they stood on air and began to drift toward the door.
Someone passed through my line of sight like a rainbow. I caught at his arm without thinking; felt the electric prickle of the charged cloth and let go of it again. He turned to look at me, seeing worn jeans and a leather worker’s jacket, the only kind of clothes I felt comfortable in; seeing the plain tight curls of my hair, the half-homely strangeness of my face. He couldn’t make me fit in. ... I saw him figure me for some rich eccentric. I realized he was right, in a way, and I grinned. He smiled, a little uncertain.
“Is—uh, is the show always like that?”
He nodded. “But the dreams are always changing.”
“Is there anyone here besides us? I mean, who runs this place? Who owns it? Where are they?”
He shrugged. “I never see anyone. But I’ve no doubt they watch over us all from the other side of the sky.” He waved vaguely at infinity. His eyes were glassy.
“What about the Dreamweaver? Who is she? Where does she go? I want to ... want to ... thank her.”
He laughed. “She sees into our minds; no doubt she sees our gratitude there. Who knows where she goes, or who she is? It’s all a part of her mystery. Knowing too much would spoil it.” He leaned forward, sharing a secret. “Anyway, she’s not human, you know.”
I felt my face close. “Neither am I.”
He half frowned. “That’s not funny.”
“I know.” I looked back again at the emptiness where she’d been; feeling the empty place in my mind. He drifted away. The room was darkening around me, infinity reaching an end, walls closing in with almost a physical pressure. I followed the rest of them out into the street, not thinking about where I was this time, but only about tomorrow—about remembering this place, and coming back to it again, and again.
I walked back to the Center through Oldcity’s night without seeing any of it. I climbed the ancient circling stairs at the rear of the quiet building to my room. And as I opened the door I remembered Jule again, remembered her coming here and how our evening had started; how it had ended, when she left me at the Haven without a goodbye. Why? But I wasn’t ready yet to go to her and find out. Because it would mean sharing what had happened to me, and I wasn’t ready for that; not even with Jule.
I stretched out on my sleep platform, staring at the ceiling. My long-pupiled stranger’s eyes tracing every crack, even in the darkness. Alien. She was an alien, the Dreamweaver— and that was why she’d been able to reach into every mind in that room at once and start them all into fantasies. Why she’d even been able to crack the tomb I’d buried my own mind in. No one else I’d met since I’d lost my telepathy had even come close—because I was only half human. The other half was Hydran, like she was, and that half came with Psionic ability that no one I knew could touch. All human psions had some Hydran blood, but in most of them it was generations thin—from the time before humans had decided to hate the only other intelligent race they’d ever encountered.
My mother had been Hydran; my mother was dead. My life after that had been living proof that nobody wanted a Hydran halfbreed—until I’d met Jule and Siebeling. But even they hadn’t been able to make me a telepath again.
And yet the Dreamweaver had looked at me and known, and even holding dozens of other minds, she had made a blind man see.
I rolled onto my stomach, pushing the heels of my hands into my eyes; seeing stars, God, oh God! feeling tears. I ground them out. After more than a year working with other psions crippled by human hate, proving to them just by existing that they could be worse off than they were ... to have this happen! To feel alive again, to feel the presence of another mind reach into mine. The pain of returning life was the sweetest torture I’d ever known. The Dreamweaver ... I had to find her; had to let her know . . . let her know ... a heavy peace began to settle on me as I touched the memory again . . . find her. . . .