Suzanne lifted her hand to her head, touching the stone. Other aliens nearby were already at work, embedding the small stones in the foreheads of people seated by the road. She stood up. A group of boys, stones glittering on their brows, approached her, palms open in thankfulness. She reached out to them with her mind and embraced them, crying out silently in joy.
Suzanne, clothed only in a tattered robe, stood in the doorway of a dome. The Aadae would teach humanity all that they knew before leaving for another world. Then mankind would have to ready its own ships and prepare to save another race from the oblivion of death. She knew her body would not last long enough to undertake the journey, but she would be with the ships, helping them to locate beings that still huddled together in fear.
She looked around her. The body of Gabe Cardozo was nearby, propped up against a wall, face empty of expression. Rivulets of saliva ran down his beard and she smiled, knowing that his mind was out among the stars. Other people sat in small groups with Aadae, trying to learn what was necessary for their future voyage.
She had done her share, and knew no more would be asked of her. She left the dome and walked to the highway, wanting only to roam through space again. She joined the group of Aadae seated in the road, blind eyes staring upward. A naked child ran past her, heedless of the festering sores on his arms and belly.
She sat down next to the Aadae and lifted her eyes to the flaming disc overhead. Her mind floated up effortlessly, drifting through the clouds.
The turbulent yellow star ahead seemed to beckon her. I’ll be ready for you, I’ll take your wisdom with me before you fling me away. She unfurled her wings and flew toward the sun.
Behind the Eyes of Dreamers
Orielna’s courage nearly failed her as she left her flyer and approached the gate. The north-south wall hid the rising sun, its wide shadow a dark band at her left and right. The short, tended grass of the plain was weedier near the base of the wall; a gnarled, thorny bush grew next to the gate.
She shivered. Beyond the wall was the Garden, with its tangled vines, unpruned plants, and towering trees. Unchanged people lived there, creatures without links who still endured aging and death and met their end long before their minds were completely clogged by memories. Calling this place the Garden had been a joke of some kind, a reference to a mythological garden where the first human beings had lived. The unchanged ones who lived here now were innocent of knowledge and untouched by sin.
All except one, Orielna reminded herself. The man she sought had come here to hide from the consequences of his deed.
A lens winked in the smooth metal surface near the gate. When Orielna had been scanned, the door slid open; she entered, already longing to retreat, and tried to ignore the whisper of the door as it closed behind her. The forest was green with light, and the air felt wet and heavy; she had not expected the Garden to be so shadowed.
“So she sent you,” a voice said. “She wouldn’t come herself.”
Orielna looked around, startled, then saw the woman standing under a nearby tree. The link embedded in her forehead could have alerted her to the woman’s presence, but Orielna was afraid to open its channels now. The woman’s long pale hair was an unruly mass, and her brown shirt was torn; her violet eyes darted restlessly. Orielna shuddered as she remembered the message this woman had sent, insisting that Orielna and Aniya link with her and experience Josef’s assault.
“Kitte,” Orielna said softly, “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Aniya should have come herself. She’s responsible for him—she’s his sharer.”
“So am I.”
Kitte’s mouth twisted. “You’re only Aniya’s eidolon. You and Josef are no more than reflections of her thoughts. She sent her shadow to find him.”
Orielna tried to pity Kitte, but could not. The woman might have chosen to forget Josef. He was no longer a threat to her; alone and lost in the Garden, he might already be suffering for his act. But Kitte wanted him punished and had the right to demand that. Aniya had imprinted Josef with her thoughts and was therefore responsible for his deeds; she had to see that they were not repeated.
“I’ll find him,” Orielna said, folding her arms to conceal her trembling hands. “Aniya’s my sharer, so it hardly matters which one of us conducts the search, since I know Josef’s thoughts as well as she does. You’ll have what you want when he’s found.”
“If you find him.”
“I’ll have help. A man here has offered to guide me.” She stepped forward; Kitte was still blocking the only path through the underbrush. “Please let me pass.”
“I know why Aniya didn’t come. He was trying to escape her when he came to me—she can’t bear the thought of facing him and seeing that trapped, frightened look in his eyes. She’s afraid he might do to her what he did to me.”
“He would have done nothing,” Orielna said, “if you’d let him go. You shouldn’t have tried to keep him.” Her emotions were racing; she knew that she should open her link and bring herself into balance.
Kitte said, “He killed me. You don’t know what it’s like, feeling your life rushing from you, then being alive and knowing you were dead, that the break in you will never heal.”
“But I do know,” Orielna said. “You insisted that we link with you, after all.” She did not want to remember how Kitte had flooded her mind with her memories during the link, how Josef’s hands had closed around the woman’s throat. He had been smiling; his large dark eyes had gleamed with joy. “But you didn’t leave him much of a choice. Instead of letting him go, you ordered your helpmind to keep him locked inside your dwelling—he couldn’t escape without breaking your will. He couldn’t have meant to kill you. He only wanted you to release him.” Even as she said this, she knew it wasn’t so. Josef might have been only fearful at first, desperate to get away, but he had meant for Kitte to die as soon as his hands found her throat.
“He could have been happy with me,” Kitte said. “He was so unhappy when I found him in the Garden. I would have done anything for him, you know.” The woman’s intensity and disordered emotions repelled Orielna; Kitte was wallowing in longing and rage. “He’ll pay for it when you bring him out. He’ll pay for murdering me.”
I can leave now, Orielna thought, walk out of this Garden, return to Aniya, and leave the pursuit of Josef to others. She dismissed the notion; she could not abandon him now. If she brought him back to Aniya, he would be safe, however unhappy he was at being with the sharer he had wanted to escape; he could live as long as he never left Aniya’s side. If Aniya surrendered responsibility for her eidolon, others would hunt him; he would surely endure erasure then and might even be destroyed. Kitte might demand the right to decide his fate herself, since she had been his victim. Perhaps Josef would prefer the loss of his thoughts and memories or even the destruction of his body to imprisonment with Aniya.
They would all suffer, whatever happened to Josef. Aniya would struggle to bend him to her will or else endure the pain of having him wiped; she would wonder how the man whose thoughts reflected her own had grown to hate her. She would have to imprison him in her house as long as he remained as he was so that others would be safe from him. Orielna would be trapped with both of them, feeling their pain inside herself whenever she reached out to them.
Kitte, of course, wanted them all to suffer. She would probably take as much joy in that as Josef had in murdering her.
“Let me give you some advice,” Orielna said. “Drop the memory of your death. You’ll just find it harder to remain in balance if you don’t.”
“Oh, no. I want it. I won’t go through that little death to lose the memory of the one he brought to me. I won’t let him have that victory—I won’t give up part of myself, not yet, not until he’s paid for what he did. I want to feel that fully.”
Orielna edged past Kitte, ready to shove her aside if necessary, but the other woman moved out of her way. “You want to strike at me, don’t you?” Kitte shouted aft
er her. “The same thoughts were put into your mind and his, so you must feel the way he would. You can’t even have your own feelings, eidolon!”
Orielna hastened into the forest. Kitte pitied her, and there was no reason for pity. She asked nothing more than to be her sharer’s eidolon and to reflect Aniya’s thoughts; she had not wanted to leave Aniya to come here.
No, she thought; that wasn’t quite true. Though Orielna had at first wanted to go, to be apart from Aniya for a while, she had later begged Aniya not to send her on this search because she feared what it might do to her. She might diverge and become whatever Josef was now.
An eidolon—Kitte had lashed her with the word, as if it were an insult. The term was somewhat misleading. An eidolon’s body did not have to resemble that of its creator; its mind was the eidolon cast in another’s image. Aniya, alone in her house, shunning other people, had wanted a companion, someone with whom she would always be in perfect accord. The Net of minds, the interlinked intelligences that served everyone, had only to draw on its store of human genetic material to mold a body to Aniya’s specifications, then bring it rapidly to maturity before impressing the pattern of Aniya’s mind on the new being. Josef had been Aniya’s first eidolon, Orielna the second. Josef had his sharer’s dark hair, while Orielna was blond, but their eyes were Aniya’s large black ones. All their memories, thoughts, and feelings were Aniya’s; their sharer could look into their eyes and see herself.
They should have been content in Aniya’s house, reflecting their creator’s thoughts, their solitude undisturbed by contact with the presence of others. Once, they had been in perfect accord, passing their days in the games and simulated experiences Aniya preferred. Aniya’s helpmind, the nexus that expressed itself through their dwelling, had been imprinted with her thought patterns and knew their desires so well that they rarely had to address it directly as it saw to their needs. Their peaceful days were untroubled; Aniya’s happiness was their own.
Yet Josef had left them, and Aniya had been too distraught to stop him. Orielna recalled the cruel words he had spoken before he closed his link and descended the hill outside the house, determined to find out what he was apart from Aniya; he could no longer endure the sight of her. He had taunted her with that, mocking the way she had tried to fill her little world with other versions of herself.
“You love yourself,” he had said. “You can’t bear the presence of anyone else. But there must be some self-hatred inside you, too, or I couldn’t want to leave you so much. You’ve wiped every memory of yours that might cause you pain, which means there are things inside you that you can’t face, and I’m forced to share your uncertainty about what you are—what I am. I won’t erase anything, though—I want to remember what I’m leaving behind. I want to see every part of you that’s in me die while I become something more than your reflection.”
Days had passed before Aniya recovered, and Orielna had felt as abandoned as her sharer did. They had finally convinced themselves that he would return. He was too much like Aniya; he could not live among other people. They had smiled a little over his absurd notion that he could, as he put it, become what he might have been. He would have been nothing without Aniya; he lived only because she had requested him from the Net. He had been only a lifeless body, a blank slate, a mass of biological material shaped to suit Aniya’s tastes, awaiting the imprint of her thought patterns. He was hers; when he realized that, he would come back.
But he had not returned, and then Kitte’s message had arrived. Why had he killed her? He would have known that her link was open, that she would be restored to life, demanding that Aniya take responsibility for her eidolon. He must have thought his violent deed would compel Aniya to have him erased; that was one sure way of escaping her for good.
Orielna was like Josef; she knew that she should be able to sense his motives. He could never have killed Kitte if his link had been open; the minds would have kept him in balance. He probably regretted it now; he might even be hoping that he would be found and restored to his sharer. That thought cheered her for only a moment. Away from her and Aniya, Josef might have diverged; he might have changed too much for them ever to see their thoughts mirrored in him again. If that was so, having him erased might be a mercy for all of them.
She halted and leaned against a tree. She had strayed from the path and could no longer see the wall through the forest. She opened her link so that it could guide her to her destination, a hut some distance away where a hunter named Daro lived. Josef was in the Garden somewhere, his link closed so that no one could track him that way, alone, perhaps desperately afraid. He might be ready to leave by the time she found him.
She thrashed her way through the thick foliage, prodded gently by her link in the right direction whenever she strayed. This place shouldn’t, she thought, be called the Garden; gardens were tamed, planned to delight the eye and bring peace to the mind. Daro might have led her through this unruly growth, but had insisted that she make her way to his hut by herself. She had been told to bring no more than a wand and a pack of supplies. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead; she longed for the cooler, dryer air of Aniya’s house, for all the comforts and aids that were forbidden here.
She considered what she knew about Daro. The man was connected to the world outside the Garden only by his link. He came to the wall for supplies, but had not passed through the gate to the other side for many years. He occasionally acted as a guide to those wishing to explore the Garden, and he had agreed to help her. He lived alone. His past before he had entered the Garden was, at his command, locked away in the records of the Net and was inaccessible to anyone else, but that was not uncommon. Aniya had closed off her own past life before fading her memories. Perhaps Daro had also chosen forgetfulness.
Orielna opened her link fully, hoping to find a message from Daro. He had to know that she was in the Garden. She heard nothing, then closed all the channels except the one linking her to the Net. She did not even know what the hunter looked like; his image was something else he chose to hide.
It did not matter. Daro would help her, for she could never find Josef by herself as long as his link was closed. She dampened her thoughts and trudged on.
She was still far from Daro’s home when the night grew too dark to see. Her link could have guided her through the darkness, but the long walk had wearied her. She climbed up a small hill and sat down under the trees, keeping her wand and a small globe of light at her side. The light would keep animals away, but she was prepared to stun any that approached.
The leafy branches overhead hid the night sky. She missed the familiar sight; with Aniya, she had often sat in their courtyard, gazing at the stars and the specks of light that marked the Hoop of Habitats.
Most of humanity lived in the hollowed-out asteroids and glittering metallic eggs of the Hoop that encircled the Earth, shaping their worldlets to please themselves. In the past, other Habitats had fled the solar system, scattering like seeds into deep space. The people in the Habitats that remained felt no need to wander, finding enough unknown territory in their own minds, wills, dreams, and desires.
Long ago, human beings had created the Net of cybernetic mentalities to serve them. They had seeded near-space with their Habitats and had transformed the barren, hellish, sister-planet of Venus into a world of tropical gardens, tree-covered mountains, and warm, wide oceans. They had set a bracelet of Habitats around Mars and had made Earth’s moon burgeon with life. They had banished the deserts creeping across Earth’s lands and then, as though exhausted by their labors, they found rest in their Habitats and on the garden worlds they had created.
Once, according to the Net of minds, the planet-dwellers and those who lived in the Habitats had been separated by suspicion and distrust, but their links with the Net had drawn them together in the end. Those who had sought to transcend the bounds of human nature were now wandering the cosmos. The descendants of those who had rejected the linking of humankind with the Net hid in Earth’s Ga
rden and in the wilder lands of Venus and the Moon.
The rest lived in the dream their ancestors had imagined. Orielna, like her sharer, was moved whenever she contemplated the efforts of those who had made her peaceful life possible and who had not lived to experience their dream. Lately, however, thinking of the past made her feel mournful and adrift, and she had no right to be unhappy. Any misery was an affront to those long-dead dreamers. She wondered why the Net allowed unhappiness to exist.
A creature hooted overhead; something howled in the distance. “Daro?” she called through her link. No one answered.
The night amplified her loneliness and fear. She wanted to reach out to Aniya through her link, but her sharer had not wished to experience this search with her. Orielna had understood why immediately. Aniya did not want to endure the difficulties and uncertainties of the search until it was over and Josef was restored to her.
She stretched out, keeping her wand under her hand. Her link was open; if harm came to her here, the link would call upon all of her body’s resources to heal her and would summon aid. She tried to console herself with that fact, yet knew she could die in the Garden.
She had rarely thought about death before Kitte’s message. She might die, but as long as her link was open, she could be revived. Any damage to her body would be repaired. If any of her memories were lost in the moment of death, the Net would restore them; she would not even know they had been temporarily lost.
Knowing this did not comfort her now. Against all reason, she found herself wondering if death were a kind of erasure, if it was the once-dead person who lived again or only a resurrected body with a duplicated mental pattern replaced by the minds. Such a person would be like an eidolon, but one unaware of what it was. It would heal and have its memories, but would it be the same person?
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