He stayed on his knees for a long time. Then he made himself rise slowly. He did bounty now. He traveled all over the galaxy. He had served his sentence. This was done, gone. He had a wind sculpture to recover, and the people were within his grasp.
He made himself walk, and concentrate on the future.
XII
He found where they had gotten in. Another section had been dislodged, letting too-bright sunlight into the dome. Footprints marred the dirt, and several brown plant stalks were newly broken. Being this close usually excited him—one of the few excitements that he had—but this time he felt empty inside.
His breathing rasped in his throat. He had a dual feeling; that of being watched and that of being totally alone. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck. Something was wrong here.
He followed the footprints to the municipal building. The door was open—an invitation almost. He couldn't go around to the windows, since there were none, and most buildings didn't have another doorway. He braced himself, and slipped in.
The silence was heavier in here. The buildings always had a bit of white noise—the rustle of a fan, the whisper of air filtering through the ceiling. Here nothing. Perhaps they had found the controls only for the dome itself. Perhaps they wanted it quiet so that they could hear him.
The walls and floors were spotless, so clean that they looked as if they had been washed days before. Only the dirt-covered tracks of the traders marred the whiteness, a trail leading him forward, like an Earth dog on the trail of a scent.
He followed it, willing to play out his little role in this drama. Some action would take his mind off the remains of the colony, of the hollow vestiges of his past.
He rounded the corner—and found the first body.
It leaned against the wall, skin toughened, mummified into a near skeleton. For a minute, he thought it had been there since the colony closed, and the air shut down, then he noticed the weapon in its left hand. A small hand-held laser, keyed to a person's print. Last year's model.
He made himself swallow and lean in. One of the traders. For a minute, he couldn't determine which one. He ripped at the clothes, discovered gender—male—then studied the wrinkled, freeze-dried face.
Not the old trader, Minx, who had run Salt Juice. One of the younger males. Tension crept up his back. He held himself still. He had seen this kind of death before, but where?
The answer required that he let down some internal shields, reach into his own memory. He did so slowly, feeling the hot spots, the oppression the colony imposed on him. Then it came:
A Cadmium miner on one of the many cargo ships he had worked for. The miner had slipped into the hold, trying to get safe passage somewhere, not realizing that to get out of those mines, he needed a series of shots, shots that protected him from the ways that the mining had destroyed his body, processes that wouldn't start until the mining ended.
The captain of the cargo ship had leaned over to John, expressing the view for the entire ship. “God,” he had said. “I hope I don't die like that.”
John touched the corpse again, figuring that if he was contaminated, there wasn't much he could do about it. Amazing that he hadn't died when he left Cadmium. They had been away from that planet for years. Amazing that the death would come now, here, in this faraway place, with a weapon in his hand.
He took the laser from the body, ran the diagnostic. It worked. He pocketed the laser. Better to use that weapon than his own. Cover his tracks, if he had to.
The footprint path continued down the hall. He brushed off his hands and followed it. All the doors were closed, locks blinking, as if they hadn't been touched since the colony had been evacuated.
He followed the trail around another corner, and found another body: this one a woman. She was sprawled across the floor, clothing shredded, blood everywhere, eyes wide with terror. No desiccation, no mummification. This time the reek of death and the lingering scent of fear.
She appeared to have been brutalized and beaten to death, but as he got closer, he realized that she didn't have a scratch on her. John's throat had gone dry, and his hands were shaking. He had never before encountered anything as odd as this. How did people die on a dead planet? Nothing here would do this, not in this fashion, and not so quickly. He knew about death on Bountiful, and it didn't work like this.
He pulled the laser out of his pocket and kept going. The dirt path didn't look like footprints anymore, just a swirl of dirt along a once-clean floor. He half-expected a crazed trader to leap out from behind one of the doors, but he knew that wouldn't happen. The deaths were too bizarre, too different to be the work of a maniac. They had been planned. And a little scared voice inside told him they had been planned for him.
XIII
John reached the main control room, surprised to find it empty and silent. Lights blinked and flashed on a grid panel nearly two centuries old. He checked the patterns, using guesswork, experience with odd grids, and a half-worn-down diagram near the top of the room to figure out how it should run. His instincts warned him to absorb the knowledge in this room—and absorbing it he was, as quickly as he could.
A door slammed somewhere in the building.
His skin prickled. He whirled. No one visible. No sounds. Nothing except the slight breeze caused by his own actions. He moved slowly, with a deliberation he didn't feel. He checked the corridor, both directions, noting that it was empty. Then he left the main control room. There was nothing more he could do inside. He walked toward the direction of the slammed door. Someone else was alive in here, and he would find that person. He didn't know what he would do then.
His heart was pounding against his chest. Death had never frightened him before. He had never felt it as a threat, only as a partner, an accident. He never saw the murders as deaths, just failed experiments. No one he loved had ever died. They had just disappeared.
Another body littered the corridor. He didn't examine it. A quick glance told him the cause of death. Parts were scattered all over, hanging in the ritual position of Fetin killings, something he had seen too much of in his own exile.
The fourth body was crucified against a wall, upside down, blood still dripping onto the pristine floor. Perhaps he was wrong. One madman with a lot of determination, and perhaps some kind of toxic brain poisoning from a drug he wasn't used to. One man, Minx, the old trader, under the influence of the Bodean wind sculpture.
He hated to think Minx had done this in a rational frame of mind.
John had circled nearly the entire building. From his position, he could see the door, still standing open. Minx had to be outside, waiting for him. He tensed, holding the laser, setting his own systems on alert.
The dirt spread all over the floor, and a bit on the walls. Odd, without anyone tracking it. Was Minx's entire body grimy? John crept along as quietly as he could, trying to disturb nothing. Seemed eerie, as if Minx had been planning for this. It felt as if he had been watching, waiting, as if John were part of a plan. Even eerier that Minx had managed to kill so many people in such diverse ways—and in such a short period of time.
It made no sense.
John reached the front door—and went rigid, except for a trembling at the very base of his spine. Minx was there, all right; waiting, all right—but not in the way John had expected. Minx was dead.
The blood still trickled from the stumps where his hands used to be. His chest was flayed open, heart and lungs missing. Head tilted back, neck half-cut, as if whoever had done this couldn't decide whether or not to slice it through.
He hadn't been there when John had gone into the building. Minx couldn't have died here—it took too long to chop up a human being like that. John knew. He had done it half a dozen times—with willing victims. Minx didn't look willing.
The blood was everywhere, spraying everything. Minx had to have died while John was inside.
To kill an adult the size of Minx would have taken a lot of strength, or a lot of time.
The sh
ivering ran up John's spine, into his hands. I didn't mean to kill him! the little boy inside him cried. We just wanted to grow up, like Dancers. Please. I didn't mean....
He quashed the voice. He had to think. All five were dead. Something—
“John?”
He looked up. Beth stood before him, clutching a Dancer ritual blade. It was blood-covered, and so was she. Streaks had splattered across her face, her hands. He hadn't seen her since she was fifteen, since the afternoon the authorities caught them comforting each other, him inside her, her legs wrapped around him like a hug.
The first and last time John had been intimate with anyone.
She had hated the killings, had never wanted to do them. Always sat quietly when Harper made the group talk about them. Three years of sessions, one afternoon of love. Then prison ship and separation, and him bounty hunting, alone, forever.
“Beth.” He knew it wasn't her, couldn't be her. She would never do anything like this, not alone, and not now, so many years in the future. He walked toward her anyway, wanting to wipe the blood off her precious face. He reached for her, hand shaking, to touch that still-rosy cheek, to see if it was as soft as he remembered, when his hand went through her.
She was as solid as wind.
Wind.
She laughed and grew bigger, Minx now, even though he remained dead at John's feet. “Took you long enough,” the bodeangenie said. “And you call yourself the best.”
John glanced at the body, the ritual knife, found the laser in his own hand. A laser could not cut through wind.
“No,” the bodeangenie said. “It can't.”
John stopped breathing. He took a step back as the realization hit. The bodeangenie was telepathic. It had been inside John's head, inside his mind. He shuddered, wiped himself off, as if, in brushing away the sand, he brushed away the touch, the intimacy that he had never wanted. Had the others died of things they feared? That would explain the lack of external marks, the suddenness. That would explain all except Minx. Minx, who had died of something John feared.
Then the images assaulted him: the trader ship, full of sweat, laughter, and drink, hurtling toward the planet; the traders themselves, dipping into the bodeangenie like forbidden fruit, using him to enhance their own powers, tap each other's mind, playing; the Dancers, stalking out of the woods, into the desert; John, sitting in the cafeteria, his memories displayed before him; Anita, counting credits, peering into the bottle; the trap closing tight, holding him fast, a bit of wind, a bit of sand, a bit of plastic....
John was the bodeangenie's freedom if Bountiful didn't work. He could pilot the traders’ ship back to Bodean, back to the ‘genie's home. Fear pounded inside his skull. He didn't want to die like that. He had never wanted to die like that....
He slid to his knees, hands around his head as if to protect it. Harper's voice: if you want protection, build a wall. Not a firm wall, a permeable one, to help you survive the alone times. The wall must come down when you need it to, so that things don't remain hidden. But sometimes, to protect yourself, build a wall.
The sheets came up, slowly, but more easily than he had hoped because they were already half there. The bodeangenie chuckled, Beth again, laughter infectious. She went to the dome, touched it, and John saw Dancers, hundreds of them, their fingers rubbing against the plastic, their movements graceful and soft, the thing that had given them their name.
“Three choices,” the bodeangenie said. “Me, or death, or them.”
A little light went on behind his wall. The bodeangenie thought the Dancers frightened him. The ‘genie could tap only what was on the surface, not what was buried deep, no matter what its threats.
Wind, and sand, and plastic.
John hurled himself at the dome, pushing out and sliding through. The Dancers vanished as if they had never been. He rolled in the sand, using all his strength to close the dome doors. The bodeangenie pushed against him with the power of wind. His muscles shook; his arms ached. The bodeangenie changed form, started to slip out, when John slammed the portal shut.
Trapping the ‘genie inside.
The bodeangenie howled and raged against the plastic wall. The side of the dome shook, but the ‘genie was trapped. A little boy appeared in his mind, alone in a foreign place, hands pounding on a door. Let me out, the little boy said with John's voice. Please, I didn't mean to—
His words, his past. Trapped. The ‘genie was trapped. It had to be, or it would kill him. Trapped.
John started to run, as if that would drown out the voice. Across the sands toward the forest, toward something familiar. The sun beat down on him, and he realized he had forgotten his scarf, his ointment, his protection. The little boy kept pounding, sobbing. Torture. He wouldn't be able to survive it. Two more days until the shuttle arrived.
He could take the traders’ ship, if he could find it.
The forest still looked charred, decades after the fire that had happened just before John had left the planet. But the canopied trees had grown back, and John could smell the familiar scent of tangy cinnamon. Dancers.
No!!! the little boy screamed in his head.
They came toward him, two-legged, two-armed, gliding like ballerinas on one of the bases. They chirruped in greeting, and he chirruped back, the language as fresh as if he had used it the day before.
His mind drifted into the future, into emotion, into their world.
I would like to stay, John said, placing his memories behind him. I would like to be home.
XIV
Sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night, stare through the canopies at the stars, and think: Someday I will touch them. Then he would return to sleep, incident forgotten.
Sometimes he would be touching a Dancer's hand, performing a ritual ceremony, and a child's scream would filter through his mind. He would drop the knife, plead apology, and wonder at it, since none of the others seemed to mind.
He loved the trees and the grass, but the hot, dry wind against his face would make him shiver. Sometimes he would think he was crazy, but usually he thought nothing at all.
XV
Perhaps days, perhaps months later, John found himself in the desert, searching for small plants. Food, he was thinking; he would like food—when fists, a little-boy voice, pounded their way into his mind. Let me out; please let me out. Puzzlement, a touch of fear, and something against a block—
The memories came flooding back, the shuttle, the bodeangenie. He sat down, examined his fried skin. Human. No matter how much he wanted to be Dancer, he would always be human, with memories, guilt, and regrets.
The bodeangenie was still trapped. The shuttle was long gone, and John was trapped here, presumed dead, doomed to die if he didn't get out of the harsh sun and eat human foods instead of Dancer foods.
He looked back into the forest. He had no memories of the past few days (months?). Dancer thought. Dancers had no memories. He had achieved it, ever so briefly. And it would kill him, just as it had nearly killed him when he had been a boy. They were his drug, as potent as Salt Juice, and as deadly.
Please....
He stood, wiped himself off. The trader shuttle was hidden near the Singing Sea. The bodeangenie was trapped, the planet closed. He was thought dead, and Anita had lost her money.
Beth rose in his mind, pleading against the dome.
Beth. Her screams, his cries. Nights clutching a pillow pretending it was her, wanting the warmth she provided, the understanding of shared experience, shared terror.
Trapped.
The adults had punished him because he had felt trapped, abandoned, because he had killed to set himself free.
Like the bodeangenie.
John was the adult now.
He sank to the sand, examined his sunbaked skin. Much longer, and he would have died of exposure. He was already weak. His need to run, his longing for the Dancers, had trapped him as neatly as he had trapped the bodeangenie. He had been imprisoned so long that even when he had fr
eedom, he imprisoned himself.
Beth and a handful of children huddled near the edges of the dome, waiting for him. Children he had killed, others he had destroyed. The ‘genie was using their memories to reach him, to remind him how it felt to be trapped.
He needed no reminding. He had never been free.
He got up, wiped the sand off his skin. His clothing was tattered, his feet callused. He had been hiding for a long time. The ‘genie wasn't able to touch the Dancer part of his mind.
John started to walk, feet leading him away from the Dancers. He glanced back once, to the canopied forest, the life without thought, without memory. Alien influence. The reaction was not human.
And he was all too human.
Please! I didn't mean....
Yes, he had. Just as the ‘genie had. It was the only way they knew how to survive.
The sand burned under his bare feet. He wasn't too far from the dome. Perhaps that was how the ‘genie's thoughts had penetrated. Saving him. Saving them both.
John nodded, a plan forming. He would take the ‘genie back home on the trader ship, using Anita's credits for fuel. She would know that he was alive then, and she would be angry.
Then he would deal with her, and all the creatures she had trapped. He would find the Minaran, free it; free the little helldog. He would destroy her before she destroyed too much else.
Sand blew across the dome's surface. Almost buried, almost gone. He got closer, felt the presence inside.
Please....
In his mind's eye, half a dozen children pushed their faces against the plastic, waiting for him. Beth, a woman now, held them in place. No ‘genie. Just his past. Face it, Harper had said.
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