The lucky winner was back the next night, as if nothing had happened; but he wore a strange smile when he watched the Dreamweaver appear. And a couple of nights later I saw the same thing happen to someone else. Again I tried to follow; again I ran into a soft wall. Somehow, a few of the ones who came here were being chosen for something extra; but no one would tell me what, if I didn’t already know. And no matter how often I asked her with my mind, the Dreamweaver never answered me.
Siebeling had come back to the Center, in the meantime. I figured when he finally called me into his office that it would be to tell me what Jule had begun telling me with looks and frowns, if not with words: That I was spending too much time and money and getting nowhere. That maybe I’d taken on something impossible, and was too damn stubborn to admit it. Jule was with him when I entered his office; standing, looking uncomfortable. Just like I felt. “Doc?” I said, making it half a question.
He glanced up at me. His face was the same as ever; only more tired. He was a plain-looking man, and the clothes he wore were even plainer—but there was something about him, a quiet determination that made you pay attention. “Jule told me about your experience with the Dreamweaver. I take it the two of you had very different reactions.” He leaned forward; his hazel eyes searched my face.
I nodded, leaning against the closed door, running my fingers along the seams of my smock.
“You want to talk about it?”
“You’ve heard it all.” I glanced at Jule, not able to keep the accusation out of it. She met my eyes; something darker and more confused than resentment was in her own.
“I’ve heard that the Dreamweaver is Hydran. That for Jule her sendings are a cry of pain. That you can’t feel the pain—but you feel something. And so you keep going back for more. True?”
“Yeah.” I stared at my feet, at braided straps of scuffed leather. Resentment was pushing hard inside my chest, the sound of his voice taking me back suddenly; making me remember old times, bad times, before we’d seen the inside of each other’s minds, and our own.
“Why?”
What’s it to you? I almost said, almost let my own doubt turn me back into a scared street punk. I took a deep breath and raised my head. “I want to help her. Jule says she needs help—and nobody else wants to try.”
“Can try,” Siebeling said softly. Jule’s face was turned away, and I understood a little more.
“Then why do you want me to stop?”
“I didn’t say that.” Siebeling leaned further across the hard, shiny desk top, and I could see his tension. The kinetic sculpture was tumbling and ringing softly. I remembered his first wife, who’d been Hydran too, who’d died when he wasn’t there to help her. “I just want to know what you’re getting out of this for yourself.” It wasn’t an accusation. Only a question.
I shrugged. “I dunno. I ... that is, it’s what we’re here for. It makes me feel like I have a purpose. A reason. It makes me feel alive—’’
“Knowing someone exists who can prove that you are.”
“Yeah.” I looked down again.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re only letting her help you.” He glanced at the sculpture; it reversed direction. “But what’s going to happen if you can’t help her? If she won’t be helped? Can you let it go, or is this thing an obsession?” I finally began to let myself believe that he only meant what he said.
“I can handle it.” I let my hands hang loose at my sides. “If I have to forget her, I will.” But I won’t have to. My fingers twitched.
Siebeling smiled at Jule. She matched the smile without really meaning it, because she knew he wanted her to. I wondered if we were all thinking about his first wife then, and what had happened to her. “Then I don’t see any reason not to continue; at least until you’ve reached a decision. As you say, it’s what we’re here for.” Several kinds of longing were in his voice.
“Thanks.” I opened the door and went out, not wanting any of us to have more time to think.
But that night the Corpses came back; three deadheads in matching gray, looking more like businessmen than police. The Transport Authority had taken what had once been separate corporate police forces and made them its own here in Quarro. The Corpse who asked most of the questions was a Transport Special Investigator named Polhemas; his coming in person meant that the matter under investigation was making a lot of people upside sweat. . . . And it meant that even though Dr. Ardan Siebeling was a teek who didn’t try to cover it up he was still Dr. Siebeling, who had a few friends Up There.
But the Corpses were looking for someone who could pick the brains of important officials and researchers and sell what they found to the most interested party. Not just the usual combine political backstabbing, but something with underworld roots. They were looking for psions; and here we were in the middle of Oldcity, right where they’d expect us to be.
We spent hours arguing the truth and our right to exist; the way we’d had to do so many times since we’d begun the Center, and probably would have to do forever. They didn’t leave until the time of the Dreamweaver’s show was long past. I went up to my room and stayed there staring into the darkness, like a burnout aching for a fix.
And the next night it happened again. Just as we were closing Polhemas showed up, his hired help pushing the door back into my face. This time they’d come to pick on me. They wanted to blame their troubles on the Center, because that was easier than thinking; they were going to pry into the cracks until they could. And I had a record that matched just about anybody’s opinion of bad. Jule and Siebeling wouldn’t leave me alone for the questioning, which meant that Polhemas was going to give us three times the grief; but I was grateful anyway. We stood together in the office while Polhemas sat in Siebeling’s chair, daring someone to object; while he demanded to know what I was doing here, what I was really doing here, what I did in my spare time, whether anybody could prove that, prove I wasn’t moonlighting, prove I was really a mental burnout and not a galactic arch-criminal. . . .
Some other time I might have enjoyed watching a Corpse on the wrong track making an ass of himself. But the questioning went on and on, he talked down to and over and through me, while 1 watched the minutes crawl past up on the wall until I’d missed the Dreamweaver’s show again. Until I couldn’t sit through one more insulting question, couldn’t listen to Jule or Siebeling make one more soft answer in my place—
I pushed away from the wall, ‘“Listen, Polhemas, maybe you never get sick of this shit, but I do. So I’ve got a record: if you know that, you know it’s been sealed. If you’ve got anything fresh on me, then do something about it. Otherwise, try a different datafile. I’ve got a Corpse commendation on record too—just like they do,” nodding at Siebeling and Jule. Just saying it made me stronger. “That means I don’t have to—”
“Shut up, freak,” one of the other Corpses said.
Polhemas glared at him. “Is that true?” He asked Siebeling the question.
Siebeling nodded, with a smile only I could see in the corners of his mouth. Once we’d worked together for the Federation—been used by it—against a psion renegade who kept slipping through its hands. We’d stopped him; that was how I’d learned what I could really do with my mind. I’d killed him . . . and that was how I’d lost it all. “Even we have served justice in our small way.” Siebeling said. His smile said we were still waiting for justice to give us something in return.