Somehow I brought up my hands and caught his leg, twisted under him with his own motion and jerked him off his feet. He fell past me onto the pavement, coming down like a condemned building. I thanked God he hadn’t landed on top of me. I hauled myself up, the stungun in my hands; reversing our positions and a lot of other things. “Hold it.”
He was trying to get his feet under him. He stopped when he saw the gun.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“You know who.” I tried to stand straighter and not listen to my body. “I ain’t got much time. Are you gonna make this easy or hard?”
He laughed, giving me the answer.
I could see the features of his face clearly now. It looked like he’d landed on it. I wondered how much he could see of mine. I grinned and spat blood. He knew what I was. If he was like most psi-haters—“Did they tell you what kind of ‘freak’ I am—did they tell you I’m a ‘path, like she is? I can turn your brains inside out, read everything you ever thought of, back to the day you were born. It hurts like hell . . . I’ll make sure it does.” I grinned wider, hurting like hell. “You gonna give me what I want, deadhead, or do I rip it out of your skull?” I frowned like I was concentrating hard; watched his face turn to jelly.
“All right, all right!” His head dropped, but he was still staring up at me with white eyes from under his brows. “They took her to Kinba’s.”
“Where’s that?” I knew the name; I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Outside the city.”
“What’s the co-ords?”
He told me.
“Access codes?”
He told me that too; his own voice wasn’t too steady.
I spat again. “You sure about that? Maybe I should take a look.”
“It’s true!” He threw his hands up again, shielding his face, as if he thought that could stop me. “Jeezu.”
I nodded. “Okay. I think I believe you.” I hugged my aching stomach with my arm. “Thanks, sucker.”
His own arms came down, and already his face was hardening again. “You ain’t a ‘path! You didn’t even sense me waiting. You can’t—”
“I know.” I pressed the button on the stungun with my thumb, and he went to sleep.
I went out to the street to find a cab. No one looked twice as I pushed my way through the crowds; a stumbling punk who drooled blood was business as usual in Oldcity. And the cab didn’t ask questions when I shoved the woman aside and got in, just, “Destination?” I let myself collapse as it took me up over the crowds, heading for the world upside; heading for trouble.
The cab carried me out a long way beyond the southward limit of Quarro, on along the thin peninsula between pincers of sea gleaming like gunmetal under the light of the two moons. I tried to keep count of the wealthy estates winking like stars, hiding in the darkness down below. I remembered seeing mansions on the threedy somewhere a long time ago. I ached all over and felt lonelier than I’d thought I knew how to.
After a while the cab dropped down again, and the world came back at me in a rush. An estate opened out below, like a holo-still blown up out of all proportion: I couldn’t quite make myself believe what I saw tumbling down the steep hill slope, layer on layer of broken crystal pulsing with light. The cab didn’t veer off as it came down; the codes worked.
And then I was standing on the landing flat, staring at my own reflection haloed by the cab lights—tiny and shattered, repeating over and over in the crescent of facing walls. A lens opened in the smooth surface, and someone came through. It was the hologram host from the Haven. There was no cloak this time, and I decided finally that it was a woman. “Are you real this time?”
She half-smiled. “You’ve seen my show. You didn’t like it?’’ She hesitated, as if she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “That stungun you carry is useless here. This house is weapon-sealed, of course. So why don’t you toss it away.” She flicked a hand. The words were all hard surfaces and sharp edges, like the house behind her.
I shrugged, and took the gun out of my pocket. I threw it away into the dark, bloodstain-colored grass. I wondered how many other eyes were looking me over, all up and down the spectrum.
“This is a private estate, boy. Why are you trespassing here?” Her voice swatted me like a bug: not even worth a threat. I had to admire her ice.
I had to match it: “Ineh wants to see me.”
The flat line of one brow quirked. “Ineh? You’ve come to see Ineh? Then you’re that one . . . ?” Her fingers darted out at me like a snake’s head. “All right. Come in and see her, then.” Her smile ripped me to shreds.
I smiled back, tasting a little more of my own blood. “Thanks.” I followed her in through the opening iris, jaws full of glass teeth; heard it ring shut behind me. I took a deep breath. She led me through room after room that probably made the Five Worlds Museum look sleazy. “You know, I used to be a thief myself. What did I do wrong?”
She looked at me; she didn’t smile.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else in any room we passed. This was the private estate of Farheen Kinba, one of the dark gods who ruled Oldcity’s underworld. I thought about what it would be like to live in a place like this all alone . . . knowing all the time that alone was the last thing we were right now.
We took a lift down and down into a part of the house sunk deep into the hillside. And there were all the rest of the bodies, the rest of the eyes that weren’t already watching me; there was even Kinba himself. They were watching someone else, through a wall of mirror-backed glass: Ineh.
The room she sat in was almost empty of anything else; the walls were a silent gray-green, and so was the carpet. She sat in a hard, straight-backed chair, its arms and legs carved with eye-twisting tangles of vine until it almost seemed to be growing up and over her, holding her prisoner.
And across from her in a cushioned recliner, not touching her in any way, lay a man. They both wore long white robes, like shrouds; but from what I could see of his heavy face and his soft, thick hands, he was somebody who was used to having too much of everything. His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t asleep. He was dreaming. ... I watched his face, the expressions that stretched it, warping rubber; his body tightening, jerking once, shifting. Ineh’s face moved with her own shaping and sharing of his dream, but the emotions that moved it weren’t the same. Her body was as rigid as the chair that held it, trembling with strain. Her eyes were shut, and I saw the wetsilver tracks of tears lying on her cheeks.
I closed my own eyes, shut off all the outside senses I could—trying to reach what was happening out there with the one left inside. I felt whispers and mutterings, muffled cries, pressing my mind against the wall of glass that lay inside my own head. I held my breath, forgot my body and where it was. . . . Ghost images began to form, began to pull at me. Cold raw hands began to dig into my brain: This was a man with hungers that had never been satisfied, never could be. Hungers that had driven him to a position of power only a few others ever reached, given him all the pleasures that still weren’t enough. And now he had the powers of the Dreamweaver to play with. She wasn’t leading his dreams, she was following them, letting him fix the rules and being forced to play by them. The power he’d always wanted, to dominate and humiliate and use—the freedom that the laws of society kept him from ever really getting his fill of—all that was his now, his to dream about, with Ineh as his tool and his victim.
(Ineh! Ineh!) I screamed her name silently, trying to break through. But she was caught up in his nightmare; her mouth opened in her own silent scream. I pushed through the knot of watchers to the transport wall, beat my fists against it. “Ineh!” but the surface was solid, the sound recoiled. Ineh didn’t move.