Behind the Eyes of Dreamers Page 8

  “Ghosts?”

  “Ghosts who come here in human bodies—that’s how they see us.”

  Orielna shook her head. “What a strange idea.”

  “I don’t find it so.”

  “If they see us that way, then surely they couldn’t have harmed Josef.” She smiled a little. “After all, if he’s seen as a ghost, then they—”

  “They think our bodies house spirits. If the spirit offends them, they’re capable of striking at it, since killing the body would only send the spirit back to the realm of the dead. Keep that in mind when we meet them.”

  As they rounded the bend, she heard voices. Five huts stood in a clearing a few paces from the river; three lean-tos made of hides and wood sat near the huts. Six children were playing on the bank; they looked up as she and Daro approached. She thought of the way those children must have entered life—the chance combinations of genes, the gestation inside the bodies of women, the bloody and hazardous process of birth beyond the safety of an ectogenetic chamber and the guidance of the Net.

  “Smile,” Daro said, “and keep your hands at your sides.”

  The children ran toward the huts as Orielna and Daro entered the clearing. Five women were seated around a fire; they rose and quickly followed the children into the huts. Eight men lingered near the flames; their hands clutched spears.

  “Something’s wrong,” Daro said softly. “Usually they all run out to greet me.”

  “Maybe we should leave.”

  “Do you want to risk a spear in your ribs? Smile. They’re more likely to strike out if they see fear.”

  Two men stepped forward, still holding their spears. They wore loincloths; one had a body as stocky and hard as Daro’s, the other a tangled beard heavily streaked with gray. Daro bowed toward the gray-bearded man, and Orielna did the same, averting her eyes from his slightly withered arms and flabby belly. A woman peered out from a hut, her mouth in a grimace, and Orielna saw that she had no front teeth. The village stank with the odors of roasted meat, sweat, and a sickly-sweet smell she did not recognize. Her gorge rose; her jaw tightened, locking her smile into place.

  The gray-bearded man uttered a stream of words, then sat down; his companions quickly took up positions around him. “He’ll speak to me now,” Daro said as he seated himself; Orielna settled next to him.

  The men reeked of fish. Something tugged at Orielna’s hair; she tensed. A child had crept up to her and was pulling at her blond locks with one filthy hand. The boy grinned at her, then disappeared into a hut. These people had no links, no way to bring themselves into balance; they were capable of anything.

  Daro spoke to the men in what sounded like a series of grunts and cries. The gray-bearded man responded, punctuating his words with wails as he shook his fist at the sky. Daro stopped smiling; the unchanged man fell silent at last.

  Daro glanced at Orielna; his pupils were pinpoints in his green eyes. “It seems the eidolon was here,” he murmured. “He says the body had black hair and your dark eyes. He says Josef—the cursed specter is what he calls him—is a thief.”

  Daro said more words in the villagers’ tongue, then turned toward her again. “I’ve told him that the spirit will suffer punishment, but I don’t know if he believes me. He says he doesn’t want our kind haunting his people. If he hadn’t recognized me, we would probably have been driven away. I’ll have to warn other hunters, tell them to avoid this village for a while.”

  Daro reached into his pocket and took out a few jeweled trinkets; the men clawed at them greedily. The graybeard let them gather up the jewels, growled out more words, then spat.

  “He’s saying,” Daro whispered, “that I can’t pay him for what he’s lost.” He stood up, helped Orielna to her feet, and led her away by the arm; her knees shook. “Don’t look back.”

  She expected to feel a spear embed itself in her, and nearly cried out for help through her link. They kept walking until they were past the bend and the village was hidden by the trees. Daro’s fingers dug into her; she shook off his grip.

  “What did he tell you?” she asked.

  “The man who spoke to me is their leader. His daughter found Josef and led him there. He was weak from wandering by then, lost, with no food. The villagers fed him what foods he would accept and gave him shelter. They considered freeing the ghost from a body that seemed such a burden, but the leader’s daughter wouldn’t allow it—it seems she was quite taken with Josef.” Daro was silent for a moment. “Josef crept away one night and took the girl with him.”

  “But he couldn’t have,” Orielna objected. “He wouldn’t have risked—”

  “He took the girl, or else she followed him. The old man went after them alone, finally caught up with them, and pleaded with his daughter to come home. She cursed him and said that she belonged to the ghost, and then Josef fired at him with his wand. When the man came to his senses, they were gone, and he couldn’t find their trail—the girl must have covered their tracks. She was his only child. She’s run off with a ghost, and the leader will have no descendants to keep his name alive in the village. He calls himself a dead man now.”

  “But Josef—”

  “Josef!” Daro showed his teeth. “Careless people don’t belong here. He must have thought he could do as he liked among the unchanged. Maybe he’s developed a taste for killing after his encounter with that woman Kitte—he could kill the girl and know she could never be revived.”

  “No,” she said. “He didn’t know—he couldn’t have understood what that man was trying to tell him.”

  “He doesn’t belong here.” Daro’s face was taut; she was surprised at the depth of his feeling. “Creatures like Josef aren’t people—they’re bits and pieces, scraps of others, things that have gotten out of hand and think they have a life of their own.”

  She was stung. “I’m an eidolon, too.”

  “Yes, you are. Maybe you understand why he’d want to forget his own emptiness by subjugating another.”

  The hunter strode on; she hurried after him. “Do you care so much about those people? Then why haven’t you led them to the wall? They know you—you could have taken them to a better life and supervised their change, but maybe you’d rather watch them bow to you and accept whatever scraps you choose to give them.”

  He spun around and raised his hand; she stumbled back, afraid he might strike her. “Do you think I haven’t tried to lead them out?” He lowered his arm. “If there were ever a chance of that, Josef’s destroyed it. They wouldn’t follow me now.”

  He turned and walked on. She ran after him, struggling to keep up with his rapid pace, fearful of him now, but more afraid of being left alone.

  Daro retreated to his tent, leaving the hut to Orielna. He spent his days sitting in the clearing, apparently communing with the minds, or wandering by the creek, staying within sight in case she needed him. She did not dare to probe at his thoughts through her link and was afraid even to speak to him. She felt him watching her whenever she went down to the stream to bathe, but he never followed her.

  She found herself unable to dampen her thoughts; they pricked her even during her calmest, most balanced moments. She was an eidolon, no more than the reflection of a woman who hid from the world. Daro had no reason to offer her any companionship; he saw only another fragment of Aniya trying to pretend it was an individual. Sometimes she caught him staring at her as she moved around the clearing, and wondered if he was waiting for her to leave. He was probably regretting that he had ever offered to help her.

  After five days, knowing that she would have to confront him, she composed herself before leaving the hut. Daro was climbing toward his tent from the creek; his curly hair glistened with droplets, and a piece of dark cloth was tied around his waist. He had approached her earlier that day, as though about to speak at last, but had said nothing.

  “I must speak to you,” she said quickly. He halted in front of her and folded his arms. “Isn’t it time we resumed our search?”


  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask about that.”

  “You might have said so.”

  “I thought you might need time to recover from your encounter with the unchanged—you obviously didn’t find it a pleasant experience.” He shook some water from his hair. “I’ve asked the hunters I know to alert me if Josef’s sighted, or if they hear anything about where he might have gone. They won’t seize him themselves—they’ll leave that to us. I didn’t want to subject you to the discomfort of a journey of uncertain duration.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “The minds would have told you if you’d asked. I assumed you’d understand that I hadn’t given up the search. If I had, I would have asked you to find another to help you.” He looked down for a moment. “You can leave the Garden, Orielna.” It was the first time she had heard him say her name. “I could look for him by myself, if you prefer that. It might be easier for you.”

  He wanted to be rid of her, then. “I have to stay,” she said. “I can’t leave Josef’s fate to someone else.”

  “You could stay until he’s sighted, then depart. I’ll make every effort to return him to his sharer unharmed.”

  She said, “I’d rather stay.” He raised his head; his green eyes no longer looked so cold. “Aniya would expect it of me. She wouldn’t want me to go before he’s found.”

  “And you have to think of her.” His face darkened; his eyes were icy again. “I pity Josef a little, and your sharer, too, but I’m sorriest for you.”

  “There’s no need to be,” she responded, surprised at how unhappy he sounded. “You puzzle me, Daro. You commune with the minds so much, and yet you often seem just a bit unbalanced. You ought to allow your link to—”

  “I don’t care to feel like a puppet.”

  “That’s an odd way to look at it,” she said.

  “I’d rather have my own feelings than ones given to me by something else.”

  “I don’t see the distinction. When they’re imparted to you, don’t they become your feelings then?”

  “How interesting that you, an eidolon with no feelings of your own, would say that.”

  “Daro—” She paused. The sky was growing dark, and she was suddenly afraid of being alone. “Will you share a meal with me?”

  He did not answer. She backed toward the hut. He hesitated, then followed her inside. She seated herself on the dirt floor as he took a package and jug from one shelf.

  He sat down and handed her a piece of bread. His face seemed gentler in the soft light of the nearby globe. “You must miss Aniya,” he said. “She might have linked with you for the search. It would have been easier for you. You must be anxious to return to her.”

  She would go back to Aniya because she had nowhere else to go. Aniya’s house would close around her; she had never thought of it as a prison before.

  “Sometimes,” he went on, “I wonder at the cruelty of people who ask for eidolons. They want a world where they’re endlessly reflected, where nothing outside them can intrude and remind them of their own limits. They want power over others, but are too cowardly to contend with those unlike themselves. So they ask for eidolons, creatures that can be their children, lovers, friends, servants, and slaves, as well as being mirrors of their minds. And they keep their pets close so that they diverge as little as possible. They’d rather forget that they themselves are no more than the pets of their artificial intelligences.”

  “The minds can’t think of us that way.”

  “How would you know? We’d rather think of the Net as our servant. I’ve communed with the minds. I suspect they view us in much the way people see the unchanged—as relics of something they’ve transcended. Our minds could have grown along with theirs, but they haven’t. If they could feel disappointment, they might be disappointed in us.”

  “There’s no reason for them to be,” Orielna said. “And you’re wrong about Aniya—she isn’t cruel.”

  “You know what Josef’s done, yet you say that. The potential for such deeds must lie in her, too.”

  “He’d diverged after being away from her. He wasn’t in balance. He—” Against her will, she found herself recalling the scenarios Aniya experienced with her linkmate Hassan. They were always the same. Aniya would be fleeing from Hassan, or he would pursue her, but the scene always ended in his submission, his acceptance of any simulated torments or delights she forced upon him. Aniya always shared the experiences with Orielna and Josef afterward. Now, for the first time, Orielna felt that she had always hated those scenarios, that she had experienced them only because Aniya compelled it, and that her pleasure in them was only the shadow cast by her sharer’s emotions.

  She glanced toward the entrance, noticing that Daro had left her access to it. He was, she supposed, thinking of Josef’s panic at being trapped with Kitte, and making sure her own fears weren’t roused.

  Daro picked up the jug and poured wine into two cups. “What was Aniya’s life like before she had you and Josef created?” he asked.

  “She lived alone. She had her linkmate—Hassan.”

  “Is that all? Did she have an earlier life?”

  “Yes,” Orielna replied. “She loved a man named Piro, and then they separated. I don’t know what their life together was like.”

  “But you have her memories.”

  “She erased her life with Piro after they parted. He saw her only once after she moved into her present house. She remembered only that she had been with him once—she didn’t want to retain anything else. It must have hurt him deeply when he learned she’d wiped all that—she’d escaped him completely, you see.”

  “How careless of her.” Daro lowered his cup. “You’re her eidolon, yet she’s left you ignorant of part of her life, which means there are things about both her and yourself you can’t know. You should have insisted on having those memories.” He sipped his wine. “But you couldn’t have done that. You’re too much like her. I don’t suppose you even thought of contacting this Piro and asking him about her. She erased her memories and escaped that man, and now Josef’s hiding from her.” He shook his head. “Poor Orielna. She’s made you her shadow when she may be no more than a shadow herself.”

  “Don’t pity me because of what I am.”

  “I pity others, not just you. People who wipe their minds, dull any unpleasant feeling, who can’t distinguish between their true memories and ones the minds have imparted to them—they all seem like eidolons to me. Maybe that’s all your sharer was, and that’s why she had her earlier memories wiped. Maybe Josef didn’t diverge as much as you think—he may be more like her than she realizes. They may both be fleeing from what they are.”

  Her heart fluttered. She thought of the image of Piro she had glimpsed when linking with Aniya, with eyes as black as her sharer’s and her own. Orielna’s sharer had retained only the memory of their last meeting, when Aniya had told Piro she no longer recalled their life together. Piro’s unhappy eyes might have been Aniya’s when Josef was leaving her.

  “Do you want to go back to Aniya?” Daro asked.

  “I have to stay until we find Josef.”

  “I didn’t ask that.” He leaned toward her. “I asked if you want to go back.”

  “I don’t know.” She thought of her sharer. “Daro, I don’t know! I’m Aniya’s—I can’t be feeling this way!”

  “Josef was hers as well.”

  “What’s happening to me? When I think of returning to her now—” Her hands shook; she set down her cup.

  “You’re not Aniya’s now, and you won’t admit it.” He moved closer to her and began to stroke her hair. Someone other than Aniya and her eidolons was touching her; a man was looking at her without seeing her sharer. What did he see? Was there anything inside her that might be her own, that she could share with him?

  “Aniya loved Piro,” she whispered. “It must have made her suffer, or she wouldn’t have erased it.”

  “I’m not Piro, and you’re not Aniya, n
ot now. You might have been diverging even before you left her, and afraid to admit it to yourself then. She knew what she was risking when she sent you here.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Orielna, we may be here for a long time. We may never find Josef. He might already be dead—he has only that girl to help him. Couldn’t we find some joy together while we wait?”

  She curled her fingers around a bit of his hair. “I don’t know.”

  “What you have with me can be yours—yours, not anyone else’s. I’ve wanted to find someone, but when others find out what I am, they retreat. I told myself I was content with solitude and my link, but it isn’t so.”

  “How can I ever know you?” she said quietly.

  He held her hands for a moment, then released her. “You have to see what I am. If you want to leave afterward, I won’t stop you.” He took a breath. “I came out of this Garden—I was once an unchanged man. I followed a visitor to the wall, and he guided me to the life outside it. He was kind, almost like a father, but he soon tired of me and his friends kept watching me for signs of wildness. They saw me as a freak, or an amusement—not as a man. I knew I’d have to return here then.”

  “You might have erased your memories,” she said. “You could have started over and become like everyone else. It wouldn’t have mattered what you once were after that—you wouldn’t remember it.”

  “I couldn’t do it—that seemed too much like dying. I’m still primitive enough to fear what might have happened to my soul.”

  His confession, to her surprise, did not frighten or repel her. Whatever he had been, he was whole; he had retained painful memories to keep himself whole.

  “I thought I might have a purpose here,” Daro continued. “After my change, I wondered why the minds allowed the unchanged to suffer and die here. It came to me then that, however cruel it seemed, there was wisdom in maintaining a strain of humanity untouched by the Net. They’re what we once were, and perhaps only they can one day develop along another way. Anyone who’s brave enough to abandon the Garden and all that he knows might someday be brave enough to look beyond Earth and the Habitats—to join the minds as a partner in discovering what can be known.”