Nightmare (13 page)

  "Go." Ara made shooing motions with her arms. "Bother the sales clerks. Try things on. Get!"

  "Come on, Willa," Dorna said. "Let’s see what we can find you. The boys are on their own." She towed an unprotesting Willa away.

  Jeren caught sight of something and broke into a grin. "Whoa! I’m there!" He grabbed Kite’s sleeve and headed toward a display of black leather.

  "I guess that just leaves the two of us," Ara said to Kendi with a smile. "Let me look at you." She held him at arm’s length. "Hmmmmm. You’re in luck. I think brown’s your color, and it’s all the rage this year."

  Kendi laughed. "All the well-dressed monks are wearing it?"

  "You know it. Come on."

  They spent a pleasant two hours picking out various articles of clothing, including socks and underwear. The sense of choice and freedom was overpowering. He could, in theory, have anything in the store, and no one seemed inclined to tell him to hurry up. It felt strange to have the clerk bring things to him and put away what he didn’t want. Kendi loved it.

  Ara, meanwhile, informed Kendi that although they were now in high summer and the weather was warm, Bellerophon was overall cooler and rainier than July IV and Australia, which necessitated buying sweaters, thick trousers, rain gear, and heavy shirts. They were more expensive than the shorts and thin t-shirts that had made up the majority of his wardrobe back in Sydney, and the unexpected high prices dampened some of Kendi’s enthusiasm. Despite Ara’s urgings—"High quality will last longer and look better, too"—Kendi did his best to be careful. His one extravagance was a pair of fine suede boots. They were soft as butter and came up almost to his knees.

  "This is the matching jacket," said the sales clerk, putting it around Kendi’s shoulders.

  Kendi shrugged into it and looked into the mirror. He caught his breath. The jacket looked wonderful. It molded itself to his body as if it had been tailored for him. The suede was soft and the color was a bit lighter than his skin, creating a pleasing contrast. It smelled of new leather.

  "That looks perfect," Ara breathed behind him. "Kendi, that’s you. Really."

  "Already waterproofed for you," the clerk said. "And it has a lifetime guarantee. If you outgrow it, come back and we’ll make alterations. Same for the boots."

Kendi turned this way and that, admiring the way the jacket moved with him. Ara was right—it was him. He had never owned anything like it, and he wanted it like he had wanted nothing else. "How much?" he asked.

  "Eight hundred freemarks," the clerk told him, and Kendi blanched.

  "Too much," he said, reluctantly removing it. "I’ve already spent more than I should have on the boots."

  "Oh, get it anyway," Ara said. "You deserve it."

  "Enabling the shoppers again, Mother?" said Dorna, who came up at that moment. "I swear you’d offer champagne to a recovering drunk."

  "Irfan said nothing about extravagance being evil," Ara sniffed.

  "No, but the Real People did—do," Kendi put in.

  "The Real People?" Ara repeated, puzzled.

  He handed the jacket to the clerk, who accepted it without comment. "My ...tribe. Balance and moderation in all things. I can justify the boots—I need good ones—but not the jacket."

  "You’ve been a slave for three years, Kendi," Ara said quietly. "You should indulge yourself a little. And you’ll be able to pay it back. Your Silence is strong, and you’ll be a Brother pretty quick."

  Kendi looked at the jacket in the clerk’s hand one more time. He could still feel its suppleness, smell the sweet leather scent. Then he firmly shook his head, though he couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. "I can’t. It’s too much. The boots are indulgence enough."

  "Your decision, then," Ara shrugged. "Let’s check on the others."

  Willa, Kite, and Jeren had all piled up an impressive quantity of clothing. Despite his earlier comments, Jeren hadn’t stocked his entire wardrobe with black leather, though his taste in clothing ran toward daring and brash. Kite had chosen a real mishmash of styles, and Willa had selected a large number of mousy brown robes and dresses all in the same conservative cut.

  "It’s all she’d buy," Dorna said in mock despair. "We’ll have to work on her." And Willa flushed again.

  "Bill and deliver these, Mother?" asked the clerk.

  "Yes, please," Ara said, and gave him the address. "Thanks for your help."

  Kendi gave the suede jacket one last wistful glance as they left the store, then sighed and promised himself he’d come back and get it—or one like it—as soon as he had paid to the monastery whatever debts he incurred.

  Outside, Ara declared it was time for lunch—her treat. She ushered them to an outdoor cafe where they took up a table in the shade by the railing. They had just finished ordering when a rumbling vibration shook the floor and rattled the dishes on the table.

  "What the hell?" Jeren said.

  Dorna looked over the railing and pointed down. "There. Take a look."

  Kendi, Kite, and Jeren peered over the rail. Several other restaurant patrons joined them. Willa hung back. Far below, well over a dozen heavy, blimpy shapes with long necks and whip-like tails moved with surprising agility. The distance and perspective made it hard for Kendi to figure out how big they were. Their heavy feet tromped the ground, making even the giant trees shake.

  "They’re each the size of a small house, right?" Dorna said when Kendi asked. "Lots bigger than a Micky spike. They’re slow and stupid and they’ll accidentally step on anything that gets in their way, so don’t get too close, yeah?"

  "I wonder what it’d be like to ride one," Kendi said.

  Ara patted her chest in mock horror. "That kind of risk I can live without, thank you," she said. "I have enough adventure in my life without adding a dinosaur rodeo."

  The group came back to the table. "ZbeingChildciting?" Kite asked.

  Ara didn’t answer. Once again, her gaze was fixed in the distance.

  "Mother Ara?" Kendi said. "Are you all right?"

  She blinked. "Wool-gathering again. Sorry. Did you ask something?"

  "ZbeingChildciting?" Kite repeated.

  "Is being a Child exciting? It depends on what you do," Ara said. "I do field work and recruiting, so sometimes I run into ...challenges." She laughed. "I have more fake IDs than most criminals. But I’m the exception. Most of us relay communication through the Dream or teach or do research. Once you get your degree, you can do pretty much whatever you want."

  "Degree?" Willa whispered.

  "Oh yes. You have to have a degree to operate in the Dream. Or you do if you want to work for us, anyway. The monastery will provide you with an extensive general education and you can choose a couple specialties."

  "Like what?" Jeren asked.

  Their food arrived. The server placed high-piled plates in front of them. Kendi had ordered a ham sandwich with french fries—some foods had apparently lasted across centuries and light years—and the salty smells that assailed his nose were delicious. The sandwich all but dripped with some sort of white sauce with a sweet, spicy tang to it. The fries were hot and crisp, and Kendi almost groaned when he ate the first one. French fries hadn’t been on the menu for slaves at Giselle Blanc’s frog farm and it had been years since he’d tasted them.

  The server left, and Ara answered Jeren’s question. "You can specialize in just about anything offered at a non-Silent university. Math, music, computers, genetics, piloting—"

  Kendi all but bolted upright in his chair. "Piloting? You mean like spaceship piloting?"

  "Sure. We always need good pilots in the field. You can study anything you wish. As Irfan said, ‘The greater your knowledge, the lesser your risk.’ "

  Kendi saw himself at the helm of a starship, swooping through a field of enemy fire, dodging laser beams by the thinnest of margins. The science fiction sims had been his favorites when he was a kid, and he had always wanted to be the one in the pilot seat in every game. Not only that, as a pilot he’d have a better chance of getting out into space and finding his family.

  "Kendiareyouhey!" Kite snatched back his hand but not before the jolt slapped Kendi all the way down to his feet. He rubbed his arm where Kite had touched him.

  "Careful, guy," Dorna said. "Whenever you touch someone around here for the first time, you’re likely to get jolted."

  "Sorrykendi," Kite said.

  "It’s okay." Kendi continued rubbing his arm, and something occurred to him. "My mom is Silent. How come I never felt a jolt from her?"

  "I imagine you touched your mother all the time," Ara said. "You probably got jolted at some point—most Silent start that up at about age ten—but since you didn’t know what it was, you may have figured it was something like a static electricity shock and forgotten about it."

  Kendi looked down at his sandwich piled high with tender ham and wondered what his mother was eating. Suddenly even the fries seemed less appetizing. "I’m going to find her, and the rest of them. They’re out there, and I’ll find them eventually no matter what."

  "We’ll help you," Ara said seriously. "The Children don’t condone slavery—Irfan herself was dead set against it—and we work hard to get people out of it wherever we can."

  The Children would help him? That made Kendi feel a little better. And it did make sense. After all, Ara had freed
him
. But how long would it take before he could go looking, and how long would it take to find them?

  "Irfan was the first Silent human, right?" Jeren said. "Everyone talks about her like she’s some kind of goddess. Do you guys pray to her or what?"

  Ara smiled. "The Children don’t tell you who to pray to. But Irfan Qasad was an intelligent, powerful woman, and a lot of people call on her memory for guidance. She governed Bellerophon for a long time until she resigned to start the Children, and it was because of her that Silent communication became essential to the galaxy. It was that communication that allowed the invention of slipships, in fact." Ara’s voice was full of admiration.

  "What happened to her?" Kendi asked.

  "History is unclear," Ara said. "Most of her writings were lost or destroyed, and Irfan herself quietly vanished. Not even her own children seemed to know where she went—or they pretended they didn’t. Some people say she went back to her husband Daniel Vik." Ara spat the name as if it left a bad taste in her mouth. "But I’m not one of them. Irfan Qasad wouldn’t be so stupid."

  "Who was Daniel Vik?" Jeren said.

  "A filthy man, one of the worst villains in history," Ara told him. "He hated all Silent and went literally insane when he discovered Silence among his own children. Why Irfan married him in the first place is a mystery. When she finally saw through Vik and demanded a divorce, he retaliated by kidnapping one of their sons and running off to the other side of the continent to what eventually became the city-state Othertown. Some people take the fact that he left as evidence that he wasn’t actually the father of her children—or at least of the ones he abandoned. Vik assassinated his way to dictatorship and declared his intention to start a genocidal war on all human Silent. Irfan barely managed to stop him, though she couldn’t remove him from office. She worked the rest of her life to keep him from starting that war."

  "What happened to him?" Kendi asked, fascinated.

  "He was assassinated himself," Ara said. "A deserving end, if you ask me. Now who’s up for dessert? The ice cream here is really good."

  After lunch, Ara took them back to the monastery, where in a bright, airy room they took a battery of tests in a variety of subject matters. The tests, Ara told them, would give the Children an idea of what classes each of them would need and what aptitudes each of them might have. When the results came back, Kendi found he had scored well in math and poorly in everything else. Humiliation burned in his cheeks when he saw that his scores were the lowest in the entire group. Ara, noticing his discomfort, drew him aside and put an arm around him.

  "You have nothing to be ashamed of," she told him quietly. "You’ve been in cryo-sleep for nine hundred years and after that you were kept in ignorance on a backwoods frog farm. The principles of general mathematics haven’t changed in nine hundred years, but everything else has. No one thinks you’re stupid, Kendi. Certainly not me. Everything I’ve seen about you tells me you’re frighteningly intelligent, and I think your teachers are in for a challenge if they want to keep up with you."

  Kendi managed a nod. He still felt stupid.

  "And look at this." Ara pointed to a section on the computer pad’s holographic screen that reported his scores in dreadful red numbers. "You do have an aptitude for piloting. When you’re a little older, they’ll want to start you on it."

  Kendi’s eyes went round. Excitement made short work of the humiliation. "You think so?"

  "Looks that way to me. We’ll have to see." She turned to the others. "It’s getting on toward supper. Your clothes should have been delivered to your rooms by now. Why don’t all of you go unpack and eat? The evening is yours to do as you like. There’s a sim parlor on the bottom floor of the dorm if you’re into that. Explore the place or laze around—whatever you want to do."

  When Kendi got back to his room, he found a large box on his bed. His clothes had arrived as Ara had predicted. Humming to himself, he opened the package and froze. With an astonished whistle he reached inside and pulled out the suede jacket. The smell of fine leather instantly surrounded him. A paper note was pinned to the lapel.
If you can’t think of it as a gift from me, think of it as an indulgence from Irfan. Best, Mother Ara.

  Kendi hesitated, then pulled on the jacket with a wide, happy grin.

  Ara strolled toward home, feeling truly good for the first time all day. Orienting new students was one of her favorite activities, and she particularly liked this group, Kendi especially. Maybe it was because he seemed so bright and open where her own son Ben was closed and reticent, or maybe it was because she could see he had goals set for himself and he firmly intended to see them through, a philosophy she admired. Or maybe it was something else. In any case, she liked him a lot and found the others pleasant company. The impulse to buy him the jacket had been one she had decided not to resist, though it also meant dodging back to the store during the testing to buy presents for the other three as well: a black silk shirt for Jeren, a fine-woven shawl for Willa, and a soft blue sweater for Kite. Ah well. She was a full Mother now and could afford the occasional impulse buy. The shopping had also taken her mind off the grisly murder.