Behind the Eyes of Dreamers

by Pamela Sargent

  Gurit stood up, her hands on Ramli’s shoulders. Teno, still lying on the ground, looked up. Josepha thought: they’re safe, they’re all right.

  Gurit reached out to Aleph and pulled her child near her. But another small body did not move. Josepha suddenly realized that she could not see Nenum’s red hair. Warner was running to the small body.

  Josepha rushed to her friend, throwing her arms around Warner. “Don’t,” she managed to say. Warner pulled away and finally stood over her child.

  Nenum too was beyond revival, head burned off by the visitor’s weapon. Nenum’s mother was silent, clenching and unclenching her fists, shaking her head, staring at Josepha with black, frightened eyes. Josepha opened her mouth and found she had no voice. Her knees buckled and she sat down hard on the ground, hugging her legs with her arms. Dimly, she saw Gurit go to Warner.

  Warner began to wail. Gurit held her. Aleph observed them with pale green eyes. Josepha drew her legs closer to her chest.

  Teno and Ramli were standing over her. She thought: we should go, I can’t keep them here with this, what do I say, how can I explain it? Fear swept over her and she found herself shaking. Teno reached out and held her hands until she stopped.

  Others, she knew, would be there soon. The robot had probably already signaled to them. The machine intelligence, having failed to protect them, waited on the hill, its head slowly spinning as it continued to survey the woods. It held the weapon in its metal fist. The children were silent, watching her with calm, questioning eyes.

  Josepha wound her way past the cots and mats, trying not to disturb the children who lay on them. The young ones had been living here in the recreation hall for a week, always watched, never left alone nor allowed to wander. Two robots stood in the back of the room; another was posted near a doorway.

  Kelii Morgan sat in a straight-backed chair near the mat where his child Alani was sleeping. He was unarmed; the robots would stun anyone entering the room with a weapon. She motioned to him. He did not move. The children slept, breathing rhythmically. They had not rebelled against the restrictions placed on them.

  She moved closer to Kelii. “Should we go downstairs now?” she whispered. Alani stirred slightly. Kelii leaned over and adjusted the child’s blanket.

  “I’ll stay here,” he replied softly. “Go on, Josepha, you can tell me what happened later on.”

  “Sure you don’t want company?”

  “Go on, it’s all right. I want to be here in case one of them wakes up.”

  She left the room and hurried down the ramp. Below, in the room where the children usually played and studied, parents sat among the desks, computer consoles, tables, and chairs. Most of them sat on the floor. A few were on benches near the walls. Here three robots also stood guard, and she knew that there were others outside.

  Chen Li Hua, who had taken it upon herself to call the parents together, stood under the screen in the front of the room. “Where’s Kelii?” she asked in her flat, hoarse voice.

  “He wants to stay upstairs.”

  “Then we might as well start, and I’ll say what I have to say.”

  Josepha saw Chane near the doorway and made her way to him, sitting down next to him on the floor. “Where’s Merripen?” a man asked, and she recognized the voice of Edwin Joreme.

  “I didn’t ask him,” Li Hua replied. “I didn’t ask anyone except parents to come here tonight. If any of the others arrive, as I suppose they might, that’s fine, but I think any decisions we make should be ours.” She cleared her throat and squinted; her eyes became slits. “Some of us have been asking for better security here all along, for restrictions on visitors, for supervision of any stranger who came here. We allowed ourselves to be talked out of it, supposedly for the good of the children. You see where that got us. It’s time we insisted on whatever we think is right.” The small woman brushed a hand over her short cap of straight dark hair.

  Chane, looking sad and pensive, reached for Josepha’s hand and held it. “They’re gone,” he murmured to her. “I went over to their home and Li Hua told me. They left this morning, before anyone was up.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. Vladislav went with two psychologists. Warner left with a friend who came for her.”

  She was silent, thinking of what she could have done, what she could have said to Warner and Vladislav, what she had been unable to do. It had not been enough, holding Vladislav while he sobbed, calming Warner, trying to figure out how to bury poor Nenum after skin scrapings had been stored for possible cloning.

  Josepha had aided Warner, a stunned almost catatonic Warner, in arranging a small ceremony in the foothills beyond the nearby woods. She, Chane, and Gurit had accompanied Warner and Vladislav. As they stood, watching two robots place the small body in the ground, Josepha realized that the ceremony had been a terrible mistake. They were marking an irrational act, an insane act, completely outside the fabric of their society. They could gain nothing from Nenum’s death. The death of any child would have been horrifying enough in former times; even during ages when such deaths were commonplace and expected, there had at least been the hope of a life beyond or the harsher view that the deaths of the weak might make future generations stronger. Their discovery that the murderer had been a man with two suicide attempts to his credit and a confused belief in some of the tenets espoused by people like Nola Reann only made the whole thing more absurd.

  Josepha, standing with her friends, had found herself praying, clinging to the hope that the visions she had glimpsed so long ago were real. She wanted to speak of them to Warner and Vladislav, offer them something that would ease their pain. But she kept silent, thinking they would not understand or, worse yet, think she was mocking them with false hopes.

  Warner had rejected the idea of raising Nenum’s clone and had talked Vladislav out of it too. Instead, she had gone to Merripen, asking him to have the experience removed from her memory. He had called in a psychologist; at last they had agreed. It was a delicate business, this erasing of one’s memory, and Josepha knew it would help Warner only in the short run. Her friend would lose the past nine years, but eventually she would become aware of discontinuities, of blank spots, and would attempt to fill them in; the memories, little by little, might return and have to be faced. And in the meantime, a black emptiness would exist in the back of her mind to bother her without her ever being quite sure of what it was until the recollections returned, perhaps wrenchingly, in dreams and disassociated fragments. Better to let time handle it, better to absorb it, face it, and let it fade. Merripen, she was sure, had agreed to the procedure only to assuage his own guilt and sense of failure in his responsibilities. The psychologist should have treated him.

  But no psychologist would treat a biologist without the biologist’s request. The biologists had created the society and sustained it with their techniques; to question the motivations of one would be to question the society. Eventually, of course, the children, these children of Merripen’s mind, might question it and seek to change it, and then Merripen would be held to account, but not yet.

  Li Hua was still speaking, apparently answering another question. She paused, and Josepha saw Gurit rise to her feet.

  “Listen,” the former soldier said firmly, “you have something to tell us and you’ve been beating around the bush. Make your point, Li Hua.”

  “Very well. You all know about those who want to exile the children. Now some think we should have raised them with other children from the beginning, but most of us thought that would be a hardship, that there might be animosity or a lack of understanding between the two groups. In any event, we thought it wiser to wait until the children were older, and we did encourage visitors, which was probably a mistake as I see it. The children are better off developing in their own way.”

  Gurit coughed. “The point, Li Hua, the point.”

  “I propose that we agree with the proponents of exile, and move to a space colony of our own
as soon as possible.”

  Gurit sat down. Everyone absorbed the statement. A few shook their heads. Amarisa Drew, a tall Eurasian who was one of Yoshi’s parents, waved an arm. “How is that going to solve anything?” she asked in her musical voice.

  “It will ease the fears of those who distrust the children,” Li Hua replied. “Security precautions will be simpler. The children won’t have to face hostility. Any latent talents they have can develop more openly. Later, when they’re older, they can return or lead out their lives wherever they choose.”

  “One moment, please,” Dawud al-Ahmad called out. “Why should such a measure help? Why wouldn’t those who fear the children grow more afraid in their absence? Ignorance is usually a greater spur to fear than knowledge.” He tugged at his short beard. “Wisdom cannot grow in isolation.”

  “There’s a practical problem,” Kaveri Dananda said, “that you haven’t mentioned either.”

  “And what is that?” Li Hua asked.

  Kaveri stood, adjusting her green sari. “What is to prevent a group of the insane from attacking our little colony in space?”

  The Chinese woman shook her head. “Such an action requires planning and teamwork, something I hardly think fanatics would be able to do successfully.”

  “Nonsense,” Kaveri replied.

  “An isolated attack like the one Josepha and Gurit witnessed is one thing, a concerted attack quite another. Most people now have lost a good deal of the ability to work with others smoothly—we have been cultivating our individuality for too long. Disturbed people have this tendency to an even greater degree.”

  “But we would be vulnerable,” Kaveri said. “And I think you underestimate the driving force of a mad idea deeply held.”

  “We would have ample warning, we could defend ourselves, and could station ourselves at such a distance from others that we would constitute no threat.”

  “But we could still be attacked,” Dawud said. “Here, at worst, a few of us could survive. In space, we might all …” He held out his hands.

  Josepha found herself rising to her feet. Nervously, she surveyed the room. Li Hua turned toward her.

  “Josepha?”

  She cleared her throat. “We’re down here talking,” Josepha began, “while the children are upstairs under guard. I don’t know whether any of them actually feel fear or not, but they’ll certainly acquire a good imitation of it if we go on this way. They’ll learn to distrust and fear almost everyone if they haven’t already. And if they turn into alienated adults as some fear they will, we’ll have ourselves to blame, not the madman who shot poor Nenum. This exile will only make it worse for them. The only way we can help them is by returning to some semblance of normal life, here, in our homes, as soon as possible.”

  “A pretty set of sentiments,” Li Hua muttered. “But how do we keep the same thing from happening again?”

  “Don’t you see?” Josepha focused first on Kaveri, then turned toward Amarisa Drew, hoping for support. “Don’t you realize how many people will feel sympathy for us now? Distrust is one thing, murder quite another. If we communicate openly with others, we can win their trust.”

  “We tried that,” Edwin Joreme said from across the room, “and you see what happened. My advice is to have the biologists tell everyone to leave us alone and let them know what might happen if they don’t. They’re the ones with power.”

  “You’re wrong,” Josepha answered. “They don’t believe they have much power. Ask Merripen if you don’t believe me. And even if they did, that would be no solution, it would create only more hostility.” She glanced around. Amarisa, Kaveri, and Dawud were nodding their heads in agreement.

  “Li Hua has suggested a specific course of action,” Edwin went on. “You have offered only vague possibilities. Give us a course of action. What exactly would you have us do?”

  It was a fair question. She did not know how to reply.

  Then Chane spoke. “It’s obvious,” he said in his deep voice. “First, we must invite people to live here if they wish. I’m talking about welcoming them, not the sort of half-hearted tolerance of outsiders we have now. Second, some of us must leave the village for short periods to communicate with others, propagandize them, if you will. I have spoken to many people over the holo, but such a measure does not have the impact of personal, face-to-face communication.”

  “And who will go?” Lulee Bernard called out, looking like a small, auburn-haired, serious child herself. “Isn’t it more important that we stay with our children?”

  “Perhaps it is,” Chane replied, “although I don’t know how much good that’ll do them if they have no place in our world.”

  Several parents nodded their heads, murmuring. “It might be dangerous for the ones who leave,” Edwin objected. “Have you thought of that? You can’t be protected as well, if at all.”

  “It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Chane responded. Josepha saw fear in his eyes. “We have little time to spare for once,” he continued. “If we hadn’t all grown so slow to act, we would have seen the wisdom of this course a long time ago. Since I brought this up, I’ll volunteer my own services, if it’s all right with the rest of you.”

  Josepha felt her muscles tighten. She could not look at Chane. He should have spoken with her before making such an offer. She could not object here in front of everyone and she could not stop him if he wanted to leave.

  She thought: Warner was wrong, she was mistaken about Chane loving me, and now I can’t even ask her about it. Numbly she listened to the discussion go on, not really hearing any of it.

  Josepha gave in; she had no choice. Chane had persuaded the villagers. He would be accompanied by Amarisa Drew and Timmi Akakse, a handsome Jamaican with the habit of changing her name every thirty years or so.

  She wanted to argue with Chane, but she did not. Instead she tried to act calmly, explaining to the children why he was leaving them for a bit. They did not seem disturbed, asking only why they could not go as well. She had replied lamely that their studies were more important. But later she heard Teno tell Ramli that the parents were afraid they might be harmed by someone.

  Whenever Chane glanced at her, she smiled, perhaps too brightly and reassuringly. The night before he left, he held her in bed and looked directly into her eyes and she knew she had not fooled him at all. She waited for him to ask her how she really felt, hoping she could stem the flow of angry and resentful words that would pour from her, but he did not speak, possibly afraid of what she might say.

  She waited until he was ready to leave the next morning, off to join Timmi and Amarisa for a final session with Merripen before departure. Hating herself for speaking at such an awkward time, she heard her words: “You’re leaving because of me.”

  Chane pulled back as if he had been struck. “No,” he said finally, placing his hands on her shoulders. She wanted to twist away.

  “Yes. First it was Warner and now this. You want to get away.”

  “You’re wrong, Josepha, it has nothing to do with you. There’s more to it than you think.”

  “It might be dangerous,” she said, wishing she could stop the pointless argument. He took his hands away and she waited for him to walk out the door.

  “I won’t be gone that long. I wanted to bring you and the children along, but I know how hard it is for you to meet a lot of strangers. Anyway, you know we decided it just wasn’t fair to ask young children, however rational, to defend their existence before people they don’t even know.”

  She was beaten. She forced herself to smile again, to exercise the patience she should have learned during her long life. “I guess I’m being unfair,” she murmured. “I’ll miss you, but …”

  “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  He was gone.

  She went to the window and watched him stride across the courtyard, closing the gate behind him.

  4

  Teno was as tall as Josepha, Ramli somewhat taller. They had grown rapidly d
uring the past years. They had retained their sexual ambiguity; slender bodies, slightly broad shoulders, a range of gestures that flowed from the delicate to the clumsy to the athletic. They were strangers.

  They had not always been strangers. After Chane had left, Josepha had grown closer to them. She had taught them how to make pottery and how to sketch. She had been delighted when she found that they in turn were teaching these skills to the other children, though she was a bit disappointed with what they produced; accurate, photographically realistic drawings and simple utilitarian plates and vases. She had found at first that as she spent more time with Teno and Ramli, she missed Chane less.

  Chane’s first trip should have lasted two months. It had stretched into almost half a year. Had he been returning to her alone, it would not have mattered. But the children grew, the life of the village went on. She had consulted him during his calls and the children bantered pleasantly with his image, but Josepha had made the day-to-day decisions. Chane had returned to people who got along perfectly well without him.

  He, Amarisa, and Timmi stayed away from the village for longer and longer periods of time. Estranged from their families while apparently having some success on the outside, Josepha knew they found their absences easier to rationalize as time passed. Perhaps they were also telling themselves that there would be time enough to renew their relationships with their children and their lovers after they had succeeded in their outside tasks.

  Josepha sat in her favorite chair knitting while Teno and Ramli sprawled on the living room rug, poring over printouts and diagrams. She thought of Chane. She missed him more now, alone in this house with two increasingly impenetrable strangers. The hours she kept filled with new projects, friends, even a new intellectual challenge—she had decided to learn something about microbiology, equipping herself with a microscope and slides—only seemed to make her loneliness worse when she was alone with her thoughts.