Dreamfall Read Free Page B

“They want to meet you.”
    I realized suddenly that I was more than just another interchangeable
team member, a node in an artificial construct created to impress the FTA. I
was some kind of token, living proof that they weren’t genocidal exploiters—at
least, not anymore.
    Everyone and everything around me slipped out of focus, except
for the three Hydrans looking at us expectantly from across the room. Suddenly
I felt as if the drinks and the tranks and the camphs had all kicked in at
once.
    The Hydrans stood together, looking toward us. They’d stood that
way the entire time, close to each other, as if there was strength in numbers.
But I was alone; there was no one like me in this crowd, or in any other crowd
I’d ever been a part of. Perrymeade led me to them, stopped me in front of
them, as if I was a drone circulating with a platter of mind-benders.
    The Hydrans wore clothing that would have looked perfectly
appropriate on anyone else in the room—just as well cut, just as expensive,
although they didn’t show any combine colors. But my eyes registered something
missing, the thing I always checked for on another human; Databands. None
of them had a databand. They were nonpersons. Hydrans didn’t exist to the
Federation Net that affected every detail of a human citizen’s existence from
birth to death.
    Perrymeade made introductions. The part of my brain that I’d
trained to remember any input recorded their names, but I didn’t hear a word he
said.
    There were two men and one woman. One of the men was older
than the others, his face weathered by exposure, like he’d spent a lot of time
outdoors. The younger man looked soft, as if he’d never made much of an effort
at anything, or ever had to. The woman had a sharpness about her; I couldn’t
tell if it was intelligence or hostility.
    I stood studying them, the angles and planes of their faces.
Everything was where it should be in a human face. The differences were subtle,
more subtle than the differences between random faces plucked out of the human
genepool. But they weren’t human differences.
    These faces were still alien—the colors, the forms, the
almost fragile bone structure. The eyes were entirely green, the color of
emeralds, of grass ... of mine. The Hydrans looked into my eyes—seeing only the
irises as green as grass, but pupils that were long and slitted like a cat’s,
like theirs. My face was too human to belong to one of them, but still subtly
alien ....
    I felt myself starting to sweat, knowing that they were
passing judgment on me with more than just their eyes. There was a sixth sense
they’d all been born with—that I’d been born with too. Only I’d lost it. It was
gone, and any second now their eyes would turn cold; any second they’d turn
away—
    I was actually starting to tremble, standing there in my
formal clothes; shaking like I was back on some Oldcity street corner, needing a
fix. Perrymeade went on speaking as if he hadn’t noticed. I watched the Hydrans’
faces turn quizzical. They traded half frowns and curious looks, along with a
silent mind-to-mind exchange that once I could have shared in. I thought I felt
a whisper of mental contact touch my thoughts as softly as a kiss ... felt the
psionic Gift I’d been born with cower down in a darkness so complete that I
couldn’t be sure I’d felt anything,
    “Are you—?” the woman broke off, as if she was searching for
a word. She touched her head with a nutmeg-colored hand. Disbelief filled her
face, and I could guess what word she was looking for. I watched the
expressions on the faces of the two men change, the younger one’s to what
looked like disgust, the older one’s to something I didn’t even recognize.
    Perrymeade broke off, went on speaking again, like someone
refusing to acknowledge that we were all sinking into quicksand. He droned on
about how my presence on the research team meant there would be someone “more
sensitive to Hydran cultural