Dreamer

Prasad rose later than usual, feeling sandy-eyed and groggy. He hadn’t slept well ever since he had received the news about Dr. Kri and Dr. Say wanting to experiment with his daughter’s eggs. So far he’d managed to stall them for two days, but now they were likely to become more insistent, and he didn’t know what to do next.

The sweet smell of frying honey bread filled the air, and Prasad inhaled deeply, trying to wake himself up. He belted on his robe and shuffled into the kitchen, where Katsu gave him a half-smile from the stove. Before he could greet her, however, the door chime sounded.

“Who in the world…?” Prasad muttered. He opened the door — and froze. Standing in the corridor was Max Garinn, the blond virologist. He was twirling his mustache with fast, furious twists of the fingers. Prasad staggered, his knees weak.

Behind Garinn stood Vidya Vajhur.

Prasad stared. Vidya stared back. Her clothes were scuffed and dirty, and she wore a wide scarf around her neck. A battered carryall hung from her shoulder. Her expression was shocked.

“So you do know each other,” Max Garinn said, still twirling his mustache.

“Vidya,” Prasad managed to croak.

“I thought you were dead,” Vidya said, her voice just as strained.

“Father?” came Katsu’s voice behind him. “Who is at the door?”

“Your mother,” Prasad murmured.

“Perhaps we should go inside and talk?” Garinn offered.

Vidya rounded on him, eyes flashing in exactly the way Prasad remembered. “Perhaps you should leave us in private.”

Garinn took a startled step backward and Vidya strode into the apartment. Prasad made way for her, and she shoved the door shut in Garinn’s face. Katsu backed into the living room, a confused look on her face. Prasad faced Vidya in the entryway and found himself unable to do anything but stare. She had changed. His memory had preserved Vidya in her youth, with night-black hair and smooth, oval face. A part of him knew that this was ridiculous. Of course she would age, just as he had. Her dark hair had wide white streaks in it and lines were etched in her face and neck. Her eyes, however, were the same deep brown. Those eyes stared at him, and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing, that he had aged.

What a ridiculous thing it was to be thinking! He hadn’t laid eyes on his Vidya in seventeen years, and all that crossed his mind was how she looked? Emotions churned inside him. He wanted to snatch her into his arms and hold her. He wanted to run away, and that surprised him. He wanted to introduce her to Katsu, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. In the end, he did nothing.

Vidya slapped his face. “Bastard!” she snarled.

Prasad still didn’t move. His cheek stung, and he silently raised a hand to it.

“You’re my mother?” Katsu said from the living room.

Vidya turned to look at her. “Katsu?” she whispered. “My little Katsu?”

She staggered to a chair and sat down with her hands over her face. The carryall fell to the floor beside her. As if in a trance, Prasad sat as well. A fruit fish floated past the pale red oval of the room’s tiny window and the soft hum of water filters trickled in from Katsu’ bedroom aquariums. Katsu knelt at Vidya’s feet. Vidya uncovered her face, and Prasad was struck at the resemblance between the two of them.

“Mother?” Katsu said.

Vidya cautiously reached out a trembling hand to touch Katsu’s face. “My baby Katsu. No longer a baby.”

Katsu’s face was impassive, unreadable as always. Prasad opened his mouth to speak and found he had to force the words out.

“Vidya, what happened to you? Where did you go?”

Vidya looked up at him, anger still hard in her eyes. “I should ask the same. You disappeared. I looked everywhere for you, but I couldn’t find you even after seven days. Why didn’t you come back? You left me to raise-”

“It was you who disappeared,” Prasad interrupted. “I came back after I found Katsu, but the apartment was empty.”

Vidya’s face had gone an unhealthy ashen. “You came back after I left? How did you find Katsu? Have you been here all this time? How did you get here?”

“That is a story.”

“Then tell it!” Vidya commanded.

Prasad licked dry lips and shot Katsu a glance. It occurred to him that Katsu had never asked to know how the two of them had come here. He would tell the story for mother and daughter both.

“You remember when we found Katsu’s cradle empty,” Prasad began. “I was frantic after losing our other children to the Unity. I couldn’t sit and wait for the guard to try to find her, so I went out.”

“This I know,” Vidya said impatiently. “Tell me what I do not know.”

“I am trying,” Prasad said, a bit annoyed. “You must have patience. You remember also I was working as a garbage collector. Many people owed me favors for looking the other way while they dumped…things into my truck. I called in every one I had until someone gave me an address.”

“Why did you not come to get me?” Vidya demanded.

“I was too angry to think of it,” Prasad admitted. “I went to the place-a warehouse-and heard Katsu crying inside it. I did not think. I smashed through one of the doors like one of our kine would have done. Five men were there with Katsu.”

Katsu, still kneeling at Vidya’s feet, did not react.

“I fought them like a rabid dog, but they beat me senseless. I woke here, in this base.”

“They did not kill you?” Vidya said.

“Obviously not,” Prasad replied. “The men figured out I was Katsu’s father and they thought I might be valuable to their buyer as well, so they brought me here with her. Dr. Say told me-have you met her yet?”

Vidya shook her head. “I met the man named Max Garinn and I met the man with pale hair and a deep voice.”

“Dr. Kri,” Prasad supplied. “He and Dr. Say are in charge of the base and the project. At any rate, when I woke, Dr. Say told me I had been unconscious for ten days. Katsu was fine.”

“And who were the men who kidnapped Katsu?” Vidya’s hand had trailed down to Katsu’s hair again. Katsu sat like statue.

“Black market slavers,” Prasad said. “Kri told me he and Say had originally arranged to buy Katsu because they were told she was an orphan and because they needed Silent. The slavers brought me along, too, hoping to get more money. Kri said I was almost dead.”

“So you were rescued by people who buy infants on the black market,” Vidya spat.

This reunion wasn’t going as Prasad had imagined it. He could hear the anger in Vidya’s voice, see it in her rigid posture. “It wasn’t like that,” he replied uneasily. “They saved my life.”

“Your life,” Vidya pointed out, “wouldn’t have been in jeopardy if they hadn’t wanted to buy Katsu in the first place. These people hired thugs to kidnap our daughter, and you’re living with them!”

Prasad shook his head. “I’m not explaining it well. The slavers approached Kri and Say first. When they heard the slavers had a baby for…for sale, they agreed to buy.”

“And that makes it better?” Vidya said.

“You’ve changed, Vidya,” Prasad said softly. “You’ve hardened.”

“And your brain has softened. You work for the people who stole our child.”

Anger stiffened Prasad’s jaw. “It was that or live in squalor and let the Unity take Katsu on her tenth birthday. Now our daughter is seventeen years old, and she is still with her father.”

Vidya looked like she wanted to reply, then made her mouth a hard line. Katsu still hadn’t moved. Prasad’s throat thickened.

“I missed you,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t know if you were living or dead. Every day I watched Katsu grow to look like you and I wondered. Now you are here and we are fighting. Please. What happened?”

Vidya slumped back in her chair. The anger slipped from her face and her chin trembled.

“When you didn’t come back, I became afraid whoever took you and Katsu would next come for me. So I ran,” Vidya said. She reached down and gently stroked a lock of Katsu’s hair. “Where did you go?” Prasad asked.

Vidya barked a short, harsh laugh. “To what I thought would be a safe place. It took me seventeen years to realize it was not. You have a son, my husband.”

“I have two,” Prasad said, confused. “We had to give-”

Vidya cut him off with a gesture. “I was pregnant when you left. I have a daughter named Katsu, and you have a son named Sejal.”

“I do? A son? Where is he?” Prasad found he was on his feet, heart thudding. “What does he look like? Didn’t you bring him?”

“He is no longer on Rust,” Vidya replied.

“But he is Silent,” Katsu put in.

Both Prasad and Vidya turned toward her. “What?” Prasad said.

“How did you know that?” Vidya asked at the same time.

“He reaches people through the Dream,” Katsu said calmly. “He touches them and changes them. And he walks the Dream.”

“How do you know this?” Vidya repeated as Prasad sank back into his chair.

“I have seen him in the Dream,” Katsu said. “But he does not know me.”

“Your daughter is one of the few Silent who can enter the Dream without drugs,” Prasad said proudly. “She is also an expert on Rustic marine biology.”

“I see,” Vidya said. She passed a hand over her face. “This is not how I envisioned meeting you again, my husband.”

“Nor I, my wife.” Impulsively, Prasad leaned forward and took her cool hand in his. He squeezed twice. Vidya’s jaw firmed, then trembled.

“I am so angry at you,” she choked. “But I have also missed you. You and Katsu both.”

“How did you find us?” Prasad asked, still holding her hand.

Vidya took a deep breath. Her back straightened and Prasad released her. “That is a long story as well.” She told what had happened after Katsu and Prasad’s disappearance, how she discovered she was pregnant with Sejal and how she changed her name. Guilt and regret at not having been at his wife’s side washed over Prasad. How hard it must have been for her, while he, her husband, had lived in luxury with the daughter she thought dead.

“I did not wish to have another Silent child,” Vidya said. “I found a genegineer-Max Garinn. He said he could use a retrovirus to make Sejal non-Silent. And it seemed he did. Sejal was tested twice for Silence, once at birth and once at age two. Both tests came back negative. But I have since learned that he is indeed Silent, as Katsu says.”

She continued with the story, and Prasad learned how Vidya had built the neighborhood. He blinked as she related in a dispassionate voice how she had spoken to the Children of Irfan and learned of Sejal’s activities in the market. An irrational bit of anger flashed within him. What kind of mother would allow such a thing?

And, whispered a conflicting voice, what kind of father would abandon his son to do it?

“I sent Sejal to the monastery,” Vidya finished. Katsu remained impassive at her feet. “I stayed behind because I had questions. I have many contacts now, and I used them to track down Max Garinn, though it took many days. When I told him who I was, he brought me here. Dr. Kri was extremely excited to see me.”

Prasad remembered how Kri and Say had talked about Katsu’s mitochondrial DNA and how they wanted to study her and her eggs. He could easily understand the sensation Vidya’s arrival would generate.

“When I asked why he excited,” Vidya continued, “he mentioned you, and I refused to answer any more questions until I saw you.”

Prasad grimaced. “Max Garinn was recruited for the lab only six years ago and he never mentioned you. A pity he didn’t. If our…relationships with him had overlapped more closely, this reunion might have taken place years ago.”

Katsu shifted somewhat but didn’t leave her position at Vidya’s feet. Vidya had once again taken to stroking her hair. “What exactly is the lab doing, my husband?”

“My wife has not changed,” Prasad observed with grave humor. “She always wishes instant information.”

“And my husband has not changed,” Vidya said pointedly. “He is ever slow to deliver it.”

“The lab is exploring the genetics of Silence,” Prasad told her. “It began with an attempt to find a way to let Silent gestate in artificial wombs so they would no longer be ripped away from their parents.”

Vidya’s look became skeptical. “They are trying to end the slavery of the Silent by creating people in laboratories?”

“Not quite.” Prasad squirmed a bit under her steady gaze. “They were attempting to end the slavery of women who can produce Silent children. After all, some places not only enslave the Silent, but also those who can produce them. If the project is successful, that would stop.”

“Have you had any success?” Vidya’s voice was hard and flat.

“Some.” Prasad felt reluctant to explain about the Nursery.

“My husband, you have failed to think. I have been in this place less than an hour, but already I can see the lie in that story.” She gestured at the room. “This place is expensive. It must cost billions to maintain it, not to mention what the research itself must cost. Do you honestly think whoever is paying that much money is doing it for such unselfish reasons?”

“I have thought of that.” Prasad scratched one raspy cheek. He had neither showered nor shaved yet this morning. “The process, if we perfect it, would almost certainly be worth mountains of money.”

“And who pays for all this?”

Prasad looked straight at her. “I don’t know. The doctors refuse to say. But when they offered a haven to me and Katsu, I took it. I could have gone back to Ijhan, but that would have meant giving up Katsu on her tenth birthday. I had already lost you. I did not wish to lose her as well. So I stayed and worked for them.” He traced a finger over the curly pattern in the fabric of his chair. “But now, my wife, I am beginning to have doubts.”

Overcoming his reluctance, he explained about the children in the Nursery and that the lab wanted to begin experimenting with Katu’s eggs. Katsu met this news with her usual composure, but Vidya went white.

“How can you stay in such a place?” she hissed.

The words came without thought or hesitation. “I can’t.”

Prasad paused, startled at himself. He had spoken the truth. Words banged inside his skull, demanding release.

“I can’t stay,” he said again. “I do not believe that those children are not sentient. I do not believe they feel no pain. They are in physical and mental distress, and I have not let myself see this. I think…I know I blinded myself to these facts because I wanted a safe place for Katsu and for me. Can you understand that?”

“A safe place,” Vidya repeated softly. Her face softened. “Yes. I can understand.”

A moment of quiet fell over the room. Prasad’s stomach growled, and he became aware of the smell of honey bread still hanging on the air. They should eat. They could eat together as a family for the first time in seventeen years.

Was Sejal, his son, eating breakfast now?

“They are in pain,” Katsu spoke up.

“Who is?” Prasad asked absently.

“The children in the Nursery.”

“How do you know this, my daughter?” Vidya said. Her voice was calm and soothing. A mother’s voice.

“I dance with them in the Dream,” Katsu replied. “Then they don’t eat so much.”

“Eat?” Prasad said, his mind still on breakfast. Did Katsu mean the children wanted to eat with them?

“They don’t eat other people.”

Prasad snapped to full attention at this. The hackles rose on his neck. “Katsu, what do you mean?”

“The children hunger for the touch of minds denied them in the womb and in the Dream,” Katsu said. “They hurt and they are angry. I dance for them sometimes, and that calms them for a while, but they still hunger. And when they eat, they make many people despondent. Sometimes these people die.”

And with that she fell silent.

“You must explain more, daughter.” Vidya put her hand on Katsu’s shoulder. “You must tell us what you mean.”

But Katsu only rose and went into her room. The door shut softly behind her. Vidya watched her go with puzzled eyes.

“She is always like this,” Prasad ventured. “Sometimes I think she says so little because she expects the rest of us to follow her reasoning, even when we lack the intelligence.”

Vidya rose as well. “I think my husband needs to show me these other children.”

“I think,” Prasad said, pushing himself up from his chair, “my wife is correct.”

Dr. David Kri was murmuring to a computer pad in his hand before the clear barrier in the Nursery. He was in his early middle years, blocky and short, with pale hair, red cheeks, and narrow green eyes. Beside him stood Max Garinn studying the spiky lines crossing a readout monitor and twirling his blond mustache. In the Nursery itself, several of the dark-haired children twitched and convulsed. Their mouths opened and shut, as did their brown eyes. Saliva dribbled down several chins. Vidya stared, her face pale.

“My husband,” she whispered. “They look like you.”

Prasad opened his mouth to deny this, then swallowed the words. The time for denial was over. Vidya was correct, and he knew it, had always known it. Just because he had never looked up the records stating which children had received his DNA did not mean the knowledge was hidden. Vidya was forcing him to look, and now he would see.

Dr. Kri looked up from his pad. His eyes widened at Vidya. “What the hell?” he sputtered. “Prasad, what is she doing here? This is a restricted area!”

“Vidya must see everything before she decides whether or not to join the project,” Prasad replied calmly.

“And I will join,” Vidya put in. “I find this fascinating.”

Prasad stared. Vidya ignored this and turned to Max Garinn. “But first,” she said, pointing at him, “you must answer my questions.”

Garinn turned the monitor off. “Go ahead.”

“You told me you could change my son Sejal so he would not be Silent,” Vidya said flatly. “You lied. My son is Silent, a powerful Silent.”

“He’s the one the Unity was looking for?” Dr. Kri said, astonished. His voice was rich and mellow. “And you’re his mother?”

“Yes.”

Wild anticipation mixed with amazement and…hunger? on Dr. Kri’s face. Prasad could almost see the wheels turning in the man’s head.

“I told you I had an experimental process,” Garinn corrected, still twirling his mustache. Prasad wanted to snatch his hand away from it. “I told you my viruses would change him right down to his stem cell DNA. I made no promises, and I gave you money. The process obviously worked. Your son came up negative on both scans for Silent genes, so there must have been enough change made to fool the Unity. What are you complaining about? No one came to take him when he was ten years old.”

“But he is still Silent,” Vidya insisted, her voice a cold, deadly calm. “Did you do that on purpose? I need to know.”

Garinn shook his head. “No. It was an unanticipated side-effect.”

He turned the readout monitor back on. Beyond him, one of the Nursery children abruptly went limp just as another went into another fit of spasmodic behavior. Vidya looked like she wanted to say more, then apparently thought the better of it.

“You’ll join us, then?” Dr. Kri’s eyes gleamed and he clapped his hands once under his chin. “That’s wonderful! What we could do-it boggles the mind. I mean, Prasad’s DNA alone gave us this.” He gestured at the twitching bodies in the Nursery, and a wave of shame swept over Prasad. “If we combine it with yours, well-we may bring this project to conclusion in only a few more years.”

“I will, of course, require compensation,” Vidya said thoughtfully. She leaned against a desk. “I will have the same benefits you are giving Prasad, plus a salary twenty percent higher than his and a twelve thousand kesh signing bonus.”

Dr. Kri smiled. “Oh dear. We aren’t made of money, you know. Our…sponsor does well by us, but still-”

“Yes, I see,” Vidya said, waving a hand. “Very well. I shall gather my things, then, and leave you to arrange my transportation back to-”

“Now, now,” Dr. Kri interrupted, his rich voice taking on a silky edge. “I didn’t exactly say no.”

Vidya finally settled for a salary twelve percent higher than Prasad’s and an eight thousand kesh bonus. Prasad shook his head. Why was she bargaining? They were going to leave, weren’t they? He knew he couldn’t stay. Now that he could see the place through Vidya’s eyes, every moment spent in the Nursery made him more and more uncomfortable, more and more ashamed.

After the dickering ended, Vidya turned to Prasad. “Perhaps my husband will help me unpack?”

She took him firmly by the elbow and all but towed him away from the Nursery. The moment they had cleared the labs, Prasad turned to her.

“What was that about? Why did you say you would stay? I thought-”

“We are staying,” Vidya said in a voice that brooked no argument, “until we can figure out what to do about those children.”