Dreamfall Read Free Page A

turned back.
    Perrymeade’s smile strained. “Well, yes, the job has its challenges—and
its compensations. Although my family still won’t let me admit what I do for a
living.” His mouth quirked, and Ditreksen laughed.
    Perrymeade caught me looking at him; caught Kissindre looking
at him too. His face flushed, the pale skin reddening the way I’d seen hers
redden. “Of course, money isn’t the only compensation I get from my work—” He
gave Ditreksen the kind of look you’d give to someone who’d intentionally
tripped you in public. “The conflicts that arise when the needs of the Hydran
population and Tau’s interests don’t intersect make my work ... challenging, as
you say. But getting to know more about the Hydran community has taught me a
great deal ... the unique differences between our two cultures, and the
striking similarities .... They are a remarkable, resilient people.” He looked
back at me, as if he wanted to see the expression on my face change. Or maybe
he didn’t want to see it change on Ezra’s. His gaze glanced off my stare like
water off hot metal; he was looking at Kissindre again.
    Her expression hung between emotions for a long second, before
her lips formed something that only looked like a smile. She turned back to
Sand, her silence saying it all.
    I listened to her finish telling Sand how we’d reached the
conclusions we had about the artifact/world called the Monument and about the
ones who’d left it for us to find—the vanished race humans had named the
Creators, because they couldn’t come up with something more creative.
    The Creators had visited Refuge too, millennia ago, before
they’d abandoned our universe entirely for some other plane of existence. The
cloud-whales and their by-product, the reefs, were one more cosmic riddle the
Creators had left for us to solve, or simply to wonder at. The reefs were also,
not coincidentally, the main reason for Tau’s existence and Draco’s controlling
interest in this world.
    “But how did you come to such an insight about the Monument’s
symbolism?” Sand asked—asking me again, I realized, because Kissindre had given
me all the credit.
    “I ... it just came to me.” I looked down, seeing the
Monument in my memory: an entire artificial world, created by a technology so
far beyond ours that it still seemed like magic; a work of art constructed out
of bits and pieces, the bones of dead planets.
    At first I’d thought of it as a monument to death, to the
failure of lost civilizations—a reminder to the ones who came after that the
Creators had gone where we never could. But then I’d seen it again, and seen it
differently—not as a cemetery marker, but as a road sign pointing the way
toward the unimaginable future; a memorial to the death of Death ...
    “... because he has an unusual sensitivity to the
subliminals embedded in the matrix of the Monument.” Kissindre was finishing my
explanation again when I looked up.
    “Yes, well, that is what he’s best at, that sort of
instinctive, intuitive thing,” Ezra said, shrugging. “Considering his
background ... Kissindre and I put in long hours of search work and statistical
analysis to come up with the data that supports his hypothesis. We constructed
the actual study—”
    I frowned, and Kissindre said, “Ezra ...”
    “I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve the credit—” Ditreksen
said, catching her look. “Without him, we wouldn’t have had a starting point.
It’s almost enough to make me wish I were half Hydran ....” He glanced at me,
with a small twist of his mouth. He looked back at Sand, at the others,
measuring their reactions.
    There was a long silence. Stilt looking at Ditreksen, I
said, “Sometimes I wish you were half human.”
    “Let me introduce you to our Hydran guests,” Perrymeade
said, catching me by the arm, trying to pull me away without seeming to. I
remembered that he was responsible for overseeing Tau’s uncertain race
relations.