Behind the Eyes of Dreamers (27 page)

It was impossible for her to tell if they had been frightened at all. She gazed at them, trying to discern some difference, then saw one; neither child would look at her directly. “We made a mistake, rigging the Bonds,” Ramli said.

“Why did you do it then?”

“We were sure you wouldn’t worry about us, and we didn’t want others to find us. You know some don’t wish us well.”

“You could have died.” Instantly Josepha wished that she had not spoken so harshly.

“I know. We all thought we might. We didn’t want to.”

They had said little more on the way home.

“Don’t be sad,” Josepha said now to Chane. He tried to smile, but his dark eyes remained morose. “They’re safe, and maybe they’ve learned something from all of this, something we couldn’t have taught. I’ll admit, it’s learning things the hard way, but—”

“They’ve learned they can die,” he responded. “And before that, when Nenum was killed, they learned they might have to hide. Do you think those are useful lessons, Josepha?” She did not reply. “They have learned fear.”

“I don’t know if they have or not, I couldn’t tell.”

“And they may react the way many of us have, by retreating.”

“Is something else bothering you, Chane?”

He put out his cigarette and lit another, passing the box to her. “I will tell you something you won’t find in any public record of my life,” he said suddenly. “Do you want to hear it? It’s not pleasant.”

She lit her cigarette. “If you want to tell it, I’ll listen.”

“You know that during the Transition I was in hiding. I trusted only two people with information about where I was. I wanted to live until it was over and like many in public life I had enemies. A friend contacted me, one of those I trusted. He pleaded with me to return to the capitol, another government had fallen and he wanted me to help form another, they needed my foreign contacts and experience. As you may know, some countries managed to restore civil order before many African countries could. He thought they might help. As an additional incentive, he told me that my wife and one of my children were imprisoned, prisoners of a tribe sometimes hostile to my own. He was trying to get them and others released but needed my aid.”

Josepha waited for him to continue, tapping her ashes into a pewter tray. Chane was hunched over, elbows on knees, staring down at his feet. “I didn’t go,” he said at last, so softly she could barely hear him. “It was too risky, I thought, telling myself I couldn’t have done much anyway. I didn’t go. I hid. In fact, I moved so that no one could contact me again.”

She had to say something. She reached toward him, then pulled her arm back. “But,” she began. She swallowed. “You said,” she went on, “that your wife and children were still alive.”

“They are. Does that make me any less culpable? Do you want to know what she went through during her imprisonment? Her body was repaired and her mind was wiped of the experience afterward, but I am still a witness to it, I was told everything. I will never have it wiped from my memory. That is part of my punishment.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. He moved away from her and slouched at the other end of the sofa. “I have wanted to redeem myself since then if I could. That’s why I came here and it is also why I left after Nenum’s death. At least that’s what I thought at the time—I wanted to stay here, but I thought speaking to others was more important. Maybe it was just an excuse to retreat from you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Don’t you see? At first I didn’t think I knew you well enough, and later … I couldn’t tell how you felt toward me. You never even argued with me very much.”

She sat up. “Why should I have argued with you?”

“It would have shown you cared.”

“I thought trying to be rational and pleasant was a better way of showing care. There isn’t very much worth arguing about when you know sooner or later it’ll be forgotten.”

He sighed. “That sounds like selfishness, not concern.”

“Why?”

He rose and paced to the window, then turned to face her. “It keeps you from getting involved, from committing yourself. I know, I’m guilty of the same thing. Why didn’t you get angry over Warner?”

Josepha opened her mouth to speak, but Chane continued. “Because you would have had to admit your pain and maybe that it was partly your fault as well. Why did I do it? Maybe in some way I was testing you, Josepha. Why didn’t you do the same thing? Because you could make me feel guilty by not retaliating, yet avoid any real confrontation where we might have had to make a decision one way or another.”

“But I love you,” she said, feeling the words were almost useless. “I have for a while. What you did long ago doesn’t matter to me now. All of us did things like that or we wouldn’t be alive today.” She paused, then forced herself to continue. “I worked for a shady cryonic service, even though I suspected many of their clients would never be revived. I bought longevity shots illegally. I didn’t do much to make anyone’s life better. And before that, out of fear, I ran away from the only man I ever really loved, and when I was an adolescent, I tried to run away through suicide.”

“I guess,” Chane replied, “that we have at last laid our cards on the table. We humans are peculiar, aren’t we? I can see why Merripen wanted a change.”

She stood up. “What do we do now, Chane?”

He crossed the room and put an arm around her. “We settle things with Teno and Ramli, between ourselves, and then …” He paused. “Right now, I think we need rest.”

The children, Josepha noticed, looked almost guilty. They poked at their bananas and milk, gazing obliquely at her and Chane across the table.

“You caused us a lot of pain and worry,” Chane began. “I want to know the reasons.”

“Chane,” Josepha said hesitantly, “can’t we wait until we’ve finished breakfast first?”

“No.”

“We made a mistake,” Teno said softly. “We needed to be alone for a while, we had some things to work out and decisions to make.”

“Couldn’t you have made your decisions here?” Chane asked.

“We had to be by ourselves. We didn’t think you would worry and we wanted to make sure no one hostile to us knew where we were.”

“But you could have gone to the lodges,” Josepha said. “You could have had robots protect you there.”

Teno stared directly at her. “That didn’t help Nenum.”

“We’re sorry,” Ramli said. “Maybe we should have told you. We thought you’d have more trust in us. We forgot that you don’t see things quite the way we do. And we didn’t count on an accident, though we should have. We were too busy protecting ourselves from other people.”

They were trying to twist it around, Josepha thought, trying to make it their fault. It should not have surprised her; quite naturally the young people thought themselves more rational than their parents. “Have you decided anything?” she asked.

“We had to decide,” Teno said calmly, “whether to stay here, voluntarily exile ourselves, or pursue a third course.”

“Wait a minute,” Chane interrupted. “Don’t you think your parents have anything to say about what you’re going to do?”

“Please let me finish,” Teno replied tonelessly. “You were right when you decided to speak to people outside the village and to have more visitors here. The problem is that you didn’t go far enough. We need to live with other people now. Maybe we should have been brought up with other children from the beginning. We want to move away from here. It will be hard—I don’t know how well we’ll get along, but we have to start.”

“You want us to build another village somewhere else?” Chane said.

“No,” Teno responded. “That would be the same thing we have now. We want to live with others. Some of us may live off-planet, the others in different societies here. It won’t be easy, having to leave each other, but it’s the only way. People won’t see us as a group then, but as individuals. And we’ll be forced to learn, to get along, to find out what to do, each of us, because we won’t have the others to lean on. Instead of isolating ourselves, we’ll learn how we can help.”

“But you’re so young,” Josepha said, looking to Chane for support. “You’re children, you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t decide something like that yet.”

“We’re not like you, Josepha,” her child said. “We don’t have much experience, but that doesn’t make us children. Physically, we’re grown. We don’t have the hormonal changes and emotional problems others do at our age.”

“It’s time for us to lead our own lives,” Ramli added.

“And what are we to do?” Chane said, sounding weary. “Go with you? Stay here? Do what we want? Did you think of us at all?”

“Do what you think is best,” Ramli said. It sounded cold to Josepha; the child seemed to realize that. “We’re not abandoning you,” Ramli went on. “You’ll see us often, you can advise us. You’ll have to tell us if we’re doing something wrong.”

Josepha, looking at the two serious young faces, knew that they and the others would have their way, whatever the parents or Merripen or anyone else thought. The children would take their leave; she and Chane would have their own decisions to make. They would leave the village; there would be no point in remaining. It all reminded her of death, the end of one thing, the beginning of another.

5

The autumn leaves, bright spots of orange, red, and yellow, covered the ground near the creek. They rustled under the feet of Josepha and Teno, muffling the cracks of dead twigs. Overhead, sunlight shrouded by gray clouds penetrated the webbing of bare tree limbs.

Teno, clothed in sweat pants and a heavy red jacket, walked with hands shoved into pockets. The child’s gray eyes matched the cloudy sky and seemed to hide as much. “I’ll call you from Asgard,” Teno was saying. “I may go to the Moon afterward.”

“I’ve never been off Earth,” Josepha murmured. “It seems silly now, sort of unenterprising.”

“Maybe you’ll visit me,” her child said. “Isn’t it about time you went?”

“Probably. I hope I can bring myself to set foot in a shuttle.”

“The future may be there. We talked about it, all of us. We want to find out more. We’re curious, I think we’ll go on a long journey someday, or our descendants will. They probably won’t be anything like you or ourselves.”

“Probably not.”

“Even we might not be the same. We’ve talked about somatic changes, readjustments in our bodies, but I think we’ll need more experience before deciding what to do.”

They turned from the creek and walked back toward the house. The old maple tree still remained; the apple tree Josepha had planted still lived, although its fruit was small and bitter. The house itself looked the same but felt old, unused, musty. She had left the village hoping to gain some strength from her old home and had felt only displaced. She could no longer live here.

“Will you go live with Chane, Josepha?”

“Yes, at least for a while. He wants me to travel with him, meet some of his friends. He feels he has to continue speaking for you. He’s probably right.”

“He is right. Our plans may not work out. Some call us infiltrators—as if we’re subversive.” Teno sniffed loudly. “It’s good that you’ll be with Chane. Without Ramli and me to worry about all the time, you’ll be able to work things out between you.”

Josepha stopped and turned to her child, gazing into Nicholas Krol’s gray eyes. “Teno,” she said hesitantly, “there’s one thing I have to ask, it may seem strange or silly to you, but humor me for a bit.” She paused. “I don’t know how to put it exactly. Do you have any feelings for me at all, as a parent? Do you really, deep down, feel any sort of an attachment, any concern? I just want to know.”

The gray, quiet eyes watched her calmly. “It would be strange,” the child answered, “if we could have lived among you without coming to some understanding of your feelings. Of course I’m concerned. I care about you and I’d feel a loss if I no longer saw you or couldn’t speak to you. If one loses a friend or companion, one loses another perspective, another viewpoint, a different set of ideas and the personality that has formed them.”

“That isn’t quite what I meant.” Josepha struggled with the words. “Do you feel any love?” She waited, wondering what Teno thought.

Teno was silent for a few moments. Josepha thought: I shouldn’t have asked. A person could profess love, but actions were what counted. Teno and the others had tried to show all the love they were capable of feeling if they could feel it at all. One could not ask, should not ask.

“Do you believe,” Teno said softly, “that only your physiology, your glands, your hormones can produce love? It isn’t true. Love is part of a relationship, it can’t be reduced to physical characteristics or body chemistry. I love you, Josepha. I’ll care about you as long as I know you or remember you.”

She should not have asked. The words could tell her nothing. She could still doubt, still wonder if the child was telling her what would be most comforting.

But Teno’s face was changing. As she watched, she saw the child’s lips form a crescent, and realized with a shock that Teno was smiling. It was a slow smile, a gentle smile, compassionate but impenetrable. A softness seemed to flicker behind the gray eyes. It was Teno’s parting gift.