All she needed was a plan.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Drew Fleming, Investigative Reporter, Earth
Rafille Mallory was a plump, motherly-looking woman who kept people in cages. Harenn watched her with hard brown eyes and wondered how the woman could sleep at night.
'That's her?' Bedj-ka said.
'It is,' Harenn said. 'Stay with me, my son. I do not want to lose her-or you.'
Bedj-ka wordlessly fell into step beside Harenn as they threaded their way through the crowd of shoppers. This part of SA Station was given over to consumer goods for the wealthy, and the tall, wide tunnel was lined with expensive shops and exclusive stores. Long balconies created two more floors on both sides of the hallway, and occasional escalators and lifts granted access to them. Potted plants and fountains were artistically scattered about. Brightly-colored clothing displays and the rich smell of baking cookies tugged at Harenn's attention, but she ignored them in favor of the woman she and Bedj-ka were trailing.
By now it felt natural to have Bedj-ka at her side, though Harenn still woke up and looked in on him in the middle of the night, just to make sure he was still there, that his return hadn't been a dream. For his part, Bedj-ka had fallen easily into the rhythm of Harenn's life. When they returned to Bellerophon, she would have to enroll him in school, but for now he assisted her in engineering, in the medical bay, and today, with a bit of spying. She liked having him there.
Despite all this, Harenn still felt strong flashes of negative emotion. She had missed all but the first month of Bedj-ka's life. She had missed his first steps, his first words, his first day of school, and more. Other people, strangers, had been there to see them instead, and how could they celebrate these things properly, when to them Bedj-ka had been nothing more than a slave? Harenn felt cheated and angry, angry at Isaac Todd, angry at the slavers who had brokered Bedj-ka's sale, angry at this Matron and Patron who had bought him.
Bedj-ka, for all his chatter, actually talked very little of his time in the Enclave. Harenn had managed to glean here and there that they were a small group who viewed the Silent as blessed people who needed to be sequestered because their gift made them more vulnerable to the normal foibles of humanity. Enslavement assured easier control, so the Enclave bought Silent children, both to 'shelter' them and to train them. Once such Silent grew to adulthood and were able to work in the Dream, they kept the Enclave afloat financially by providing communication services. It was similar to the Children of Irfan, in a twisted sort of way.
Rafille Mallory paused to examine display of perfume in a store window. An animated sign flashed Obsess with Pheromones. Harenn hung back to watch. This was growing frustrating. Three days of shadowing had turned up nothing. The woman had no hooks. Jeung and Papagos-Faye had shown vices that had proven easy to exploit, but Mallory had so far shown nothing. Harenn hadn't even been able to determine where on her person she kept her computer key.
Bedj-ka started to speak, then coughed hard.
'Cover your mouth, please,' Harenn said, and pretended to stare thoughtfully into a gushing fountain so she could spy on Mallory, who was smiling at a display of stuffed toys.
'Sorry.' Bedj-ka coughed again, this time into his fist. Mallory picked up a small bear in motley colors, considered it, and set it back down again. 'When do you want me to do it?'
'Soon,' Harenn said.
Mallory wandered into the perfume store, her walk almost a waddle. Harenn decided to wait outside for her rather than follow her inside and risk being noticed. She paid an exorbitant price for two giant cookies from a nearby bakery, and mother and son settled down on a bench to keep an eye out for Mallory's exit. The cookies were warm and soft, made with peanut butter. Neither Harenn nor Bedj-ka much cared for chocolate these days.
'I had a weird dream last night,' Bedj-ka announced amid a spray of damp crumbs.
'Do not speak when your mouth is full,' Harenn said, taking a delicate bite of her own.
Bedj-ka swallowed and said, 'I was walking through the dormitory at the Enclave, but all the rooms were empty and everything made these weird echoes around me. It felt like there were other people there with me, but I couldn't find them anywhere. I looked and looked, and then I started to run, but I still couldn't find anybody. Finally I ended up in the dining hall, and it was empty, too, except the tables were all full of food.' He held up the remaining half of his cookie. 'There were cookies like this one there, which is why I remembered the dream just now. Anyway, I was hungry, so I grabbed some food to eat it, and then I noticed I was breathing hard and I had to wait until I caught my breath before I could eat. The foods were all my favorite ones-fried chicken and creamed corn and sweet-and-sour fish-and I could eat as much as I wanted and it all tasted really good. That was weird because I never remember stuff like breathing or tasting food in dreams. Then I woke up.'
Harenn thought about this. Bedj-ka's dream was fairly straightforward. The empty rooms symbolized his feelings of abandonment and betrayal, while the banquet and its plethora of choices symbolized his new-found freedom. But she wasn't sure that Bedj-ka would appreciate all this.
'Your dream is a good omen, my son,' she said. 'Dreaming of abundant food indicates good luck for the future, or so the Ched-Balaar say.'
'What are they like?' he asked, flipping easily into a new subject. 'I've never even seen one, but Father Kendi talks about them sometimes.'
'They are strange and graceful,' Harenn said. 'I enjoy their company-most humans do-and they seem to enjoy ours. They have four legs and two arms and a very long neck that ends in a rather flat head. Their language sounds strange because they speak by chattering their teeth together and by making hooting noises. No human can duplicate the sounds, just as they cannot duplicate our language, except in the Dream, of course.'
'Have you ever been in the Dream?'
'Only once, and very briefly. Sejal brought me in. He has the power to pull other Silent out of the solid world into the Dream. I am not Silent, but he was able to bring me there for just a moment.'
'Did you like it?'
Harenn smiled at him. 'I was not there long enough to form an opinion.'
'I was supposed to start training to enter the Dream in two more years,' Bedj-ka said wistfully. 'But now I guess I'll never get there. The Despair ruined it for almost everyone. I really wanted to see the Dream, too. Everyone says it's really rigid.'
Harenn put an arm around his shoulders in a brief hug. 'Perhaps it is best that you never entered it. From what I hear, it is devastating to lose the Dream. I know Gretchen is greatly disturbed by what she has lost.'
'Is that why she's so mean all the time? She yells at me sometimes even when all I'm doing is walking down the corridor.'
'She is very unhappy,' Harenn said, making a mental note to have a few pointed words with Gretchen. 'And unhappiness makes people do things they would not normally do.'
'I was unhappy.' Bedj-ka took a pensive bite of cookie. 'During the Despair, I was so unhappy, I wanted to die. It was awful. I felt completely alone, like there was no one in the entire universe who cared about me or even knew I existed. I couldn't even move, it was so bad.'
Harenn's throat thickened. Her son had needed her, and she hadn't been there. The Despair had rocked her, filled her with pain, but she had been used to dealing with pain and had continued to function. The universal depression had ended once Kendi, Vidya, and Prasad had forced Sufur's twisted children from the Dream, but wounds still lingered. The scars ran deepest for the Silent, who had stronger connections with the Dream. Bedj-ka hadn't even entered the Dream, and he said he had wanted to die. She ached with guilt at not being there to share his pain. She hugged him again.
'You were very strong and very brave,' she said. 'And I am proud of you.'
Bedj-ka smiled at her, and Harenn's heart swelled. Then he pulled away and munched his cookie again. A moment later, Rafille Mallory exited the shop. Harenn stood and brushed crumbs from her loose-cut blouse.
'I think now is the time,' she said. 'Do you know what to do?'
Bedj-ka flashed another smile. He was quite handsome, she realized with a touch of maternal pride. 'I know,'
