Nightmare

'I’m not really aware of it until she touches me,' Kendi said. 'Then it’s like our memories merge and there’s two of me, but still only one.' He paused. 'Mother Ara, when can I start looking for my mom?'

Ara started. Kendi hadn’t mentioned his family in a long time and she had supposed he had stopped wondering if he would be able to find them.

'Once you reach Brother,' Ara said, 'you’ll be able to do field work in the solid world, if that’s what you want. You can start doing what I do-seek out Silent slaves and buy them for the Children-and see if you can track your family that way. But that won’t be for some years yet.'

Kendi looked unblinkingly up into the sun. 'Why can’t I look for her in the Dream? She’s Silent, and I’ve touched her a lot. I should be able to find her.'

'You can certainly look,' Mother Ara said, trying to think how best to let him down. 'But Kendi-not all Silent are able to reach the Dream. Ben, for one. Your mother may or may not be able to enter here. And even if she does, there are millions of Silent all throughout the galaxy. Sure, touching her in the solid world makes it easier to look for her, but you don’t have any idea where or how to look.'

'I’m good at tracking people,' Kendi pointed out. His face was a mask of intensity, but his voice was hoarse. 'And I’m good at sensing things in the Dream. Why can’t I sense her?'

'For all those reasons I just mentioned, Kendi,' Ara said gently. 'It isn’t your fault, you know.'

'Yes it is,' Kendi said. 'I should have begged Mistress Blanc to buy Dad and Martina and Utang. I should have tried to find some way to escape and find them. I should have found a way to stop them from getting on the colony ship in the first place. I could have done a lot of things.'

Ara kept her voice low, though her heart ached in sympathy for him. 'None of those things would have helped. I think you know that, but you feel guilty that you’re free when your family isn’t.'

'I’m going to find her-and the rest of them,' Kendi insisted. 'If that means I have to make Brother and then Father younger than anyone else ever did, I will. We were all supposed to be on Pelogosa building a new colony together. I didn’t want to go, but now I’d give everything to be there.'

'Kendi, you can’t-'

The Dream rippled. Ara felt the splash move against her. Kendi jumped as if he’d stepped on a snake.

'What was that?' he asked.

'I’m not sure,' Ara said. 'What would-'

'Ara.'

Fear stabbed through Ara’s chest. She and Kendi spun around and saw him. He stood only a few steps away, dressed all in black. A wide-brimmed hat hid his face. Ara felt the blood slip from her face. Her breath came short and fast. Kendi’s eyes were wide.

'Ara, my love,' the man said. 'Did you like the bracelet?'

It took every scrap of courage she had, but Ara did it. She stepped in front of her student. 'Kendi, get out of here,' she said. 'He wants me, not you.'

'I’m not going to leave you alone with him,' Kendi insisted.

'The skinny Silent who saw me with my last girlfriend,' the man said. 'Kendi, is it? You heard her. Leave. You aren’t involved.'

Kendi stepped around Ara to stand beside her. Ara mentally screamed at him to stay put, to do as he was told for once. She almost tried to shove him back, but was afraid a sudden move might send the dark man over the edge.

'Kendi, I’m ordering you to leave,' she said through gritted teeth. Because I can’t leave until I know you’re safe.

'You can’t get us both, Jeren,' Kendi said. 'Give it up.'

The black man backed up a step. 'Who’s Jeren?'

Shut up, Kendi! Ara thought. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

'We know, Jeren.' Kendi took a step toward him. 'We know about you, we know about Dorna. We know about it all. So why don’t you just give yourself up? We don’t want to-to-' Kendi fell silent. Ara suspected he was going to say We don’t want to hurt you, but he couldn’t lie in the Dream.

'You don’t know anything,' the dark man said hoarsely. 'You can’t prove it’s-'

Movement flashed down from the sky. A brown blur whipped past the black man’s head and ripped off the man’s hat, revealing Jeren’s face. The scar around his left eye-

Did his mother do that to him?

— shone white against his skin.

Jeren made a choking sound and clapped his hands over his face. For a moment, Ara thought he was going to drop to his knees and start crying. She allowed herself a small sigh of relief. Once unmasked, Jeren’s power was gone. All Ara had to do now was get him to tell her where his body was so she could-

The world exploded. With a cracking boom the ground came to life. Giant stone fingers jabbed upward, trying to trap Ara in their grip. Kendi shouted and leaped sideways. Fear stabbed through Ara, but she didn’t even think. A sledgehammer appeared in her hands, and she swept it in an arc around her. Stone shattered in a dozen directions and Ara scrambled free. She glanced at Kendi, dreading what she might see. He was crouching a little ways away.

'Get out, Kendi!' she yelled at him, but he seemed too dazed to understand her.

'You bitch!' Jeren screamed. 'I watched you in the Dream and fell in love with you. Now I have to kill you.'

Ara didn’t bother responding. She raised her fist and a bolt of lightning flashed down from the clear blue sky. It smashed the ground only a few steps away from Jeren. The thunderclap made Ara’s ears ring and knocked Jeren backward. He somersaulted to his feet in an inhumanly smooth motion.

'You missed,' he snarled. 'You wanna fight, huh? Fine by me.'

A howling wind tore across the Outback and slammed into Ara and Kendi, bowling both of them over. The air whooshed out of Ara’s lungs and she felt herself tumbling end over end. Then she slammed into something hard. Pain ran down her back and ribs. Dirt and sand stung her eyes, making it hard to see. For a moment she panicked. Then the hard-won control took over. This was the Dream, where she could dictate reality. Ara concentrated for a split-second, and a stone wall rumbled up out of the ground before her. The wind cut off. Ara cleared the grit from her eyes. Kendi lay next to her looking dazed.

'Kendi, get out,' she hissed. 'Kendi!'

But he didn’t respond. Ara grimaced. She and Jeren both had been tearing at his turf, ripping it apart and reshaping it. This all tore at Kendi’s very mind, and he didn’t have the experience to cope with it. It was the same effect that Jeren’s manipulation had had on his female victims. It didn’t bother Ara because this wasn’t her turf, but she couldn’t leave Kendi behind to face Jeren alone.

The earth shuddered and boomed. With a thunderous crack the stone wall broke and crumbled into rubble. Jeren stood on the other side, less than two meters away. Ara’s hand snapped out and a neuropistol appeared in her grip. She fired. The beam struck Jeren square in the chest.

He laughed. 'You’re a woman,' he snickered. 'You can’t hurt me.'

Ara swallowed. A battle in the Dream was a struggle between two minds fighting to control reality, and the stronger one would usually win. Jeren was obviously more powerful than Ara had thought-his mental image of an unhurt self was stronger than her image of the blast from a deadly weapon. But there were other ways to fight.

'A woman like your mother?' she said.

Jeren actually blanched. Ara gestured and the rubble vanished. Kendi slowly got to his feet. Trying to keep Jeren’s attention on her, she locked eyes with him and stepped forward.

'Your mother hurt you a lot,' she said, and wished desperately she had had time to read some specifics from the file on Riann Keller. Best to stick with the basics. 'She beat you and made fun of you, didn’t she? You and Dorna both. You hated her, but you also loved her, didn’t you, Jeren? That’s the way you feel toward all Silent women, isn’t that right?'

Jeren retreated a step. Ara didn’t even blink.

'You thought if you could make someone love you, everything would be all right. You wanted to give your mother’s friend Polly Garvin presents, but you were afraid, so you made your sister do it for you. And when Polly