Divided: Brides of the Kindred 10 (27 page)

“But—” Becca began.

“Second,” Far held up two fingers. “Our
subconscious minds are working against us. Even if we manage to think only of
the food we are trying to project, there will still be random background
thoughts—thoughts we’re not even aware that we’re thinking. But the Mindscape
will hear them and work them into our projection whether we want them there or
not.”

“He’s right,” Truth said heavily. “We are
going to slowly starve in here.”

“That or learn to love chum pizza and worm
cupcakes,” Becca said glumly.

“We never should have come!” The dark twin
picked up the platter of offending cupcakes and, with a sudden, violent motion,
hurled them into the gray mist. “Goddess damn it!” he shouted.

Becca jumped, unnerved by his anger.
“Truth!”

“You shouldn’t give in to rage, Brother,”
Far said. “It won’t solve anything.”

“Why shouldn’t I be angry?” Truth got off
the bed and began pacing back and forth. “We’re
trapped
here—do you
understand that? Either our minds are not close enough to the Orthanxians to
function in this place or we’re missing some vital piece of information for
making things work. But either way, we are
never getting out.”

“Don’t say that,” Becca pleaded. She had
been harboring the same dark thought herself but trying not to let it come to
the surface. Hearing the dark twin say it out loud seemed to cement it as
reality.

“I am only telling the truth,” Truth
snapped. “And if
you—”
He stabbed a finger at Far. “Hadn’t convinced us
to come down here, we could all three be safely aboard the shuttle bound for
home right now.”

“Which home do you mean, Brother?” Far
asked coldly. “The Mother Ship—the home of your true people? Or Pax, home to
the race that taught you to hate all that you are and abandon all you could
become for some outdated notion of—”

“Attention.” It was the bored airline
hostess voice again, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It made all
three of them jump. “Extensive monitoring shows a fracture in the OneMind of
your triumvirate,” the voice continued. “Your projections are substandard in
the extreme. Though we deeply regret it, you will now be put through a series
of tutorials in an attempt to heal these rifts.”

“Is that right?” Truth growled, clearly
not expecting an answer. “And I suppose we’re going to be booted out if we
don’t agree to go through your damn
tutorials
?”

“Failure to comply will result in your
ultimate termination from the Mindscape,” the voice said, almost as though it
was answering Truth’s sarcastic question.

“Perfect!” exclaimed Becca. “Then we’ll
finally get
out
of here.”

“As well as the dissolution of your
physical bodies within the slime tanks,” the voice continued blithely in that
same, slightly bored tone.

“Mother of God!” Becca breathed. “Does
that mean what I think it means?”
Oh, we’re in trouble here,
a little
voice in her brain whispered.
So much trouble…

“I’m afraid so.” Far’s face was pale.

Truth muttered a curse under his breath.
“I
knew
we should not have come!”

“Tutorial one begins now. You are being
monitored. Good luck,” the voice said and then fell silent.

“What are we going to do?” Becca
whispered, her lips numb with fear.

She’d been afraid earlier when she learned
they were going underground and even more frightened when she’d thought she had
lost Far and Truth in the gray fog. But
now
she knew what true terror
was.

They were about to go through some alien
test they didn’t understand—one that would probably be painful in some way—and
if they didn’t pass they would die.

And so far we’ve failed every single thing
we’ve tried to do here—how is this going to be any different?

“What are we going to
do?”
she
repeated.

“Well, to start with, I suppose we’re
going to go through that door.” Truth nodded at a strange curtain made up of
long strands of hollow wooden beads which was suddenly hanging in midair, right
beside the bed.

“What is that?” Far asked. “And where does
it lead?”

“As for where it leads, I don’t know,” the
dark twin growled. “But it
looks
like the door to my bedroom when I was
a child.”

Chapter
Twenty-six

The room they stepped into was dreadfully
familiar to Truth. It was high at the apex of the tree-top lodge where his
father and step or second mother had lived when he was a child of eight or nine
cycles. Because of their monthly transformations, the Rai’ku built their
dwellings in the branches of the vast, solid
boadab
trees that grew at
the base of the high, snow covered peaks of Pax’s main mountain range. The
trees grew together, their branches intertwining, until they were almost one
entity. Several such dwellings could be built side by side in a kind of regular
neighborhood but for some reason, no one had chosen to build on either side of
their lodge.

Truth knew the reason for that—his father
came home drunk too often. Drunk and raving about the past. The Rai’ku were
adamant about minding their own business—privacy was not just respected but
enforced. And no one wanted a neighbor who shouted his personal business, who
could be heard swearing at his mate and children or perhaps beating them…

Truth shut down the painful thought at
once. Gods, why did they have to come here? What kind of sadist was running
this Mindscape place anyway?

A large wooly glow worm, one of the few
non-carnivorous animals native to Pax, was hanging from the wooden beams,
shedding a pale, diffuse blue light over the front part of the room. Truth was
at the back of the room, where the roof sloped steeply upward. He took a step
and felt the floor sway ever so slightly under his adult weight. Yet, somehow,
he wasn’t all there. He felt…fractured in some way. Cut in two, which didn’t
make any sense. And then he saw the reason why.

Lying in the small hammock strung to the
ceiling with twisted rope and just visible by the wooly worm’s light, was the
younger version of himself. Truth remembered the hammock bed well. It was old
and lined with the vast, leathery
boadab
leaves that felt ice cold to
the touch until they finally warmed to your skin. His younger self was huddled
in the center, covered by a ragged blanket and shivering.

The temperatures were cold on Pax—colder
than was natural to a Twin Kindred, he supposed. But since none of his brothers
or the other children in his learning pod seemed to mind the chilly weather, he
had learned to say nothing of it, even if he felt he was freezing to death. The
blanket was a shameful secret—something he had scavenged out of the refuse heap
to use on particularly chilly nights. He kept it hidden beneath the wide
boadab
leaves during the day and only took it out at night, when he could no
longer stand the bite of the wind, which whipped through the cracks in the
wooden lodge.

Gods, was I ever so small?
Truth looked at his younger self in
wonder. The outline of the child’s body beneath the thin, ragged bit of cloth
looked scrawny and malnourished. The pale eyes that peered out from under his
wild thatch of black hair looked huge in the small, thin face.

“Truth, where are we? And why is it so
cold here?” Becca’s voice drew him out of his reverie and he realized that she
and Far were standing beside him, looking around the bare wooden room
curiously.

“This is nowhere,” he said roughly. “Just
a…a place I remember from childhood.” He scowled. “As to the temperature—it’s
always like this on Pax.”

“This isn’t just a place you remember from
childhood—it
is
your childhood, isn’t it?” Far asked. “Is that you?” He
raised an eyebrow and nodded at the shivering child.

Truth felt his scowl deepen. “I suppose.”

“You were so
little.”
Becca sounded
surprised.

“I didn’t begin to get my growth until
later,” Truth snapped.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” she
protested softly. “It’s just—you and Far are both such
big
guys. It’s
hard to imagine you as ever being anything else.”

“Yes, well…” Truth gestured tersely. “As
you see, I once was.”

“Can you, uh, I mean, can
he
see
us?” Becca asked. The three of them were standing in the back of the room, out
of sight of the small figure and the wind was whistling loudly enough to hide
their murmuring voices. How they had entered through the front door of the room
and yet wound up in the back, Truth had no idea.
Must be another trick of
the Mindscape.

“I…do not know if I—if he—can see us or
not.” He felt strangely reluctant to risk speaking to his younger self. He was
older now—a grown male who was able to fend for and protect himself. It was
painful to see the scrawny, scared, vulnerable child he had once been. Painful
in the extreme.

“I think—” Far began but just then the
sound of heavy, deliberate footfalls could be heard on the wooden steps leading
up from the floors below.

The small figure in the hammock bed
stiffened immediately, his pale eyes growing round with fright. The glow worm
picked up on his heightened tension and the soft light bathing the room turned
from calm blue to a warning orange.

Truth found himself holding his breath,
right along with his younger self.
Please, Father, don’t come up,
he
thought.
Please not tonight. Stay on the second floor. Go to sleep and in
the morning you’ll feel better. You always feel better in the morning…

But the heavy steps reached the second
floor landing, paused a moment, and then continued up. The small figure in the
hammock bed gathered himself into an even smaller, tighter ball and his eyes squeezed
shut in a desperate parody of sleep. The glow worm’s light gave him away,
however, by going a deep, alarmed scarlet, casting the room into red and black
shadows.

The door, the same curtain of hanging
wooden beads they’d come through, rattled as a huge figure filled the
doorframe.
Gar
-berry
ale
fumes flooded the air like poisoned gas.

Truth sucked in a breath as fear flooded
him. He couldn’t help himself—that scent still affected him. Still stole the
breath from his lungs and made his hands clench into helpless fists at his
sides.

Suddenly he saw something his young self
had missed.

The blanket!
he wanted to cry.
Hide it! Quickly
before he sees! Before he knows your weakness!

He wanted to shout the warning aloud but
his tongue seemed frozen to the roof of his mouth. Not a sound emerged, no
matter how much he wanted to warn the shivering figure in the bed.

“Boy.” His father’s deep, rough voice held
no love tonight. Sometimes he came upstairs and cried over Truth, mourning the
passing of those he had lost. Sometimes he told stories of the strange and
wonderful planet called Twin Moons where everyone had a brother and no one was
ever alone, ever.

Truth sensed that tonight there would be
no crying or story telling. Feels Pain was well into his cups tonight. He was
much more likely to dish out a hard clout to the face than a heart warming tale
of the homeland.

“Boy!” his father said again, louder.

The small figure in the hammock bed
twitched but made no reply.

I’m asleep. Asleep. Asleep,
Truth could almost hear his younger self
thinking.
Maybe he’ll leave me alone if he thinks I’m asleep.

Feels Pain might have, too. Sometimes it
worked to pretend—to play dead as it were.

It almost worked tonight. The older male
stood swaying just inside the doorway, struggling to make out his son’s small
form in the glow worm’s baleful crimson glow. The boy was quiet and perfectly
still. Truth knew his younger self was holding his breath because he was too—he
couldn’t help it. Feels Pain was just turning his ponderous bulk to go back
down the stairs when he stopped and stared.

With a sinking heart, Truth saw that his
father’s drink-blurred eyes had caught sight of something—the secret something
young Truth had forgotten to hide.

“What’s this?” With one long stride his
father was at the side of the swinging hammock which hung chest high to him.
One hand snatched the ragged bit of blanket from the shivering form of his son
and the other yanked the hammock, tipping it over and spilling young Truth onto
the hard wooden floor.

Truth watched as the younger
version of himself stumbled to his feet, one arm already raised to shield his
face.

“I asked you a question!
What…is…
this?”
Feels Pain bawled, shaking the bit of blanket in young Truth’s
face. In his meaty fist, it looked no bigger than a rag.

“It’s…it is…” Truth’s mouth
worked, trying to think what to say. “Please, Apa,” he whispered at last.
“Apologies but I…I was so
cold.”

“Cold?
Cold?”
his father raged.
“Don’t you mean
weak,
boy? It’s always cold here on Pax—you learn to
bear it. Do you ever hear your half brothers moaning and complaining of the
cold?”

“No, but…they’re half Rai’ku,” young Truth
objected. “Their blood runs hot.”

“Which means
you
must be
all
Rai’ku,”
Feels Pain bellowed. “You must be better than any of them.” He ripped the
already ragged blanket to tiny shreds and tossed them to the floor. “There,” he
told the young Truth who was standing silently, his eyes wide and frightened.
“I’m doing you a favor, boy. You have to be tough to survive on Pax. It’s every
male for himself here—nobody to back you up or care if you live or die. Not
like—” He broke off abruptly and might have left but the young Truth chose this
moment to speak up.

“Not like Twin Moons, is that right, Apa?”
he asked softly.
“Would I have a
brother too, if we lived there? Someone to be with me always?”

Feels Pain rounded on the slight figure
like a wounded beast. His eyes were red and bloodshot and the smell of
fermented gar-berries was strong on his breath.

“You don’t need anyone to
be with you,”
he snarled at Truth. “Don’t need anyone but yourself. Get that straight. Look
at me…” He’d gestured drunkenly, throwing out one arm. “I got no one. My
brother and your mother both gone. Like
that.”
He snapped his fingers.
“But I’m
fine.
Got a whole new life here and so do you. So stop dwelling
in the past.”

“But if I had a brother—”

The young Truth didn’t get to finish. A
hard, heavy hand slapped him, rocking his head back on his slender neck and
knocking him to his knees.

“Shut the fuck up about that now!” Feels
Pain roared harshly. “You haven’t got any fucking brother and you don’t
need
one. Never let me hear you talk about this shit again.”

“A…apologies,” Truth’s younger self
whispered. He had one small hand to his throbbing cheek and his eyes were
filled with tears but somehow he kept them from falling.

Truth knew why—he didn’t want to shame
himself before his father. Beside him, he could hear Becca suck in her breath
in horror and Far made a low, angry exclamation under his breath.

“Save your outrage,” he said blandly, as
Feels Pain reached for the trembling figure of his younger self again. “This
isn’t over yet and it won’t be for a while.”

He wanted to close his eyes, to stop
watching, but somehow he couldn’t.
What is the point of this? Why is the
Mindscape forcing me to go through this again, to endure not only one of the
most vicious beatings my father ever gave me but to double my misery by shaming
me before my brother and the female I love? Why—?

“You useless little bastard!” Feel’s Pain
roared, breaking through his frantic thoughts. “This is all your fault—
yours!
If you hadn’t come along when you did, we could’ve folded space. The attack
never would have happened. I would still have them with me instead of
you.”

He shook the frail figure mercilessly as
he shouted but as ugly as it looked, Truth knew things were only going to get
worse. As soon as Feels Pain finished shouting blame and recriminations, the
beating would begin. And this, he remembered with horrid clarity, was going to
be a bad one. Maybe the worst one he had ever survived at the hands of his
drunken father.

As if to underline his thoughts, Feels
Pain gripped his son by the hair and raised one hard fist above his head.
Sometimes he was content to slap but tonight he obviously needed to punch
something—or some
one.
And the defenseless boy was handy—an easy target.

The adult Truth, watching, knew what was
coming next. How could he not? Hadn’t he lived through this night before? Once
again he wanted to warn or protect his younger self but he found he was unable
to move or speak. Rooted to the spot, he could only watch as things went
horribly wrong.

But just as the blow started to fall,
someone rushed between the young Truth and his father.

“Stop!” a deep, angry voice commanded.
“You hit him again and I swear to the Goddess I’ll break both your arms.”

Far?
Truth
couldn’t even say his brother’s name out loud—his tongue was still frozen to
the roof of his mouth.

“Far?” Becca breathed beside him, also
apparently surprised. “Will that work? Can he actually—?”