Kinesis Page 3

  Gifts, Okka thought a little sourly, gaze resting on their joined hands. Are they really? Xe let go of her hand. "You're trusting me very easily," xe said. "I wasn't sure whether you'd even listen to me. But you don't even seem concerned for your safety."

  Her smile got smaller but showed more of an edge of humor. "Well," she said, "we both know very well that I could 'lose' you here in the Paths and you would have very little chance of finding your way out again."

  "Yes," Okka agreed. "Good. I'm glad you have that in mind. If I were any other Mimica, it would be imperative that you do just that."

  "Really?" she asked, her frown returning. "But not you? Why?"

  "The Mimica have no desire to harm you, any Avlan, or any member of your protectorates in any way," xe said.

  Her lips pursed, and she crossed her arms. "That sounded like the kind of sentence that has a 'however' trailing along behind it," she said.

  "However," Okka admitted, "we have, as a species, unwillingly become a great danger."

  "Unwillingly?"

  "This will be hard to believe," Okka said, "and for that I apologize. I doubted it myself. Doubted my own memories. Wouldn't it be just like a Mimica trick? Don't all villains think they are in the right? But my memories, Okka's memories, were stronger than Myrdu's doubt. What I've lived… my first family, my world… I could point the Mimica homeworld out in any sky. I could tell you about every hill, every patch of shoreline on the whole planet. My siblings, their children, they are real, and they love every living being in this galaxy more than words can express." Xir eyes darted away from her. "Well. I'm not… completely sure that should still be present tense."

  "What changed?" Her arms were still crossed, but her brow furrowed in concern.

  "The Creepers." Okka choked on any word past that one.

  "Creepers…?" She waited for more. Xe knew xe had to explain.

  It was going to be difficult, in more ways than one.

  Tiredly, xe answered. Xir voice sounded dead in xir own ears. "The Imperium's puppet strings. No one truly serves the Empress willingly. Not as far as we've been able to tell. All her servants were stolen, body and mind. Creepers are small parasites that live within a being and disable that being's will, replace it with instructions from the Cewri." He looked away, to the floor. "Mimica—my people—we would do anything to stop the Cewri from spreading their parasites, killing cultures and worlds wherever they go. But we had a weakness. We lived with our minds connected to each other, our wills entwined. The Creepers only had to infect one of us, and—the Cewri had us."

  "All of them at once." Nifu sounded as overwhelmed as Okka felt. "Your whole planet. Your whole race."

  "Yes." Okka's voice shook as xe continued. "Maybe everyone but me." The way time moved on Avla compared to the rest of the galaxy meant that most other missions like xirs would have ended years ago, and xe doubted that many other Mimica could have resisted reaching out to the Collective for long.

  "So you can't go home?" Her voice sounded small—the way xe felt when xe thought the same words.

  Of course. Of course Nifu would understand immediately what that meant.

  Avla had been home for her, where she was born and where her family lived, but it had never been easy. Too much to hear, too much to see, too much to feel.

  She'd been an extraordinarily sensitive and troubled child from the very beginning. Myrdu had tried many things to help her settle, to help her be comfortable among her brood. Most of them had failed.

  When Nifu had first shown her affinity for the gateways, when she'd first stepped across the veil and found a place where she could thrive, it had been a joy. Here was a place which made sense to her, a place where she could drink in information about the world around her without distress. But there was also sorrow, because they both knew that Avla would never be her home. She would never find a way to belong there, with other Avlans. She would only ever belong in the Paths.

  Okka felt that pain keenly now, both for xemself and for her.

  "You are half Mimica, too," Okka told her. "If not in form, then because you are my daughter. And I'm so sorry that you may never know your people."

  "I am, too." She sat, now, on the other end of xir couch. "I've killed Mimica, you know. Sliced them open using the sharpened edges of the holes I make in the fabric of the universe. I left pieces of them on the ground where they fell, and other pieces, the ones I cut out with those blades, ended up abandoned, lost here in the Paths. I tore them apart so thoroughly, they ended up scattered between the planes." She contemplated her hands. "I always thought of it as necessary. The stories the nobles tell of Mimica always made them sound so wicked. So dangerous."

  "We are dangerous," Okka reminded her. "And it was Atur who killed them."

  "I helped. He couldn't have done it without me. Without me, Atur's sword is only a sword."

  Okka sighed. "Has it bothered you all this time? Being part of so much death? As Myrdu, I could never ask. As an Avlan, it was my duty to support the Avlan military. But if what you do alongside him troubles you, then it's my duty, Okka's duty, as your father to tell you that it should be your choice what you do with your talents."

  "It's necessary," she said, looking into the shifting shards of the galaxy that danced around them. "I've never relished it. But Avla's enemies must be fought. The Imperium has to be stopped. I know that. It's even clearer now, because now I know how they keep their soldiers in line." She bit her lip. "It's just the Mimica. If they weren't truly our enemies, if they were just people trying to survive, to communicate, if I owe my existence to them—to you—then I regret those deaths."

  "They understood," Okka told her. "We always knew the Avlans wanted only to protect themselves and their fellow beings."

  Nifu looked up at him with eyes glistening. "You know, I think that makes it worse?"

  Okka could only nod in understanding.

  "And now, they've been taken by the Cewri? Forced to fight for the Imperium? Why them, and not you?" she asked.

  "Because I was living alone in my own head while I lived as Myrdu. I came here to stop all this from happening," xe told her slowly, struggling with each word. "We knew that Avlan people had some resistance to Creepers—that the Empress had tried and failed to enslave your people. I came to learn why. If you had some weapon or technology that could be used against the parasites. You know why we could not simply ask. Any overtures the Mimica make as themselves are ignored at best, violently rebuffed at worst, and anything more covert would just make our reputation worse. Avlan nobles think we are an infectious disease. The idea for contact had to come from within their own ranks, or as close as we could get to their inner circle. That was Myrdu. Part of the nobility, and yet not.

  "I came to get Avlans to take a second look at Mimica, make contact again, perhaps give us a chance to beg you for your help. But you have no such weapon, and we asked far too late." Xe shook xir head. "My mission was worthless."

  A part of xem hoped she would disagree.

  She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she took a breath. "I believe you when you tell me that the Mimica are good," she said, "that they—that you—want only peace. I believe what I feel when I hear you speak. It might be foolish of me, but I do. You're my father. However, the rest of Avla will not."

  Xe knew she was right. Xe had concluded the same. But it was still bitter to hear her say so.

  There was no way to explain such a thing to Avlans. They were prejudiced against non-humanoid life like the cephalopoid Mimica. If the Avlans learned the Collective had been suborned by the Cewri, they would set out to kill the whole race.

  Okka could not be party to that. Even if xir entire race was already lost.

  "I have to run," xe told her. "Now that I know, I won't be able to hide that something's changed."

  "Can't you shift? Hide as something else?"

  Xe shook xir head. "I need to find other Mimica, if there are any. Which I know there aren't, on Avla. There may be, elsewh
ere. The Imperium hasn't come for me, which means the Collective succeeded in keeping our undercover locations secret from them." It would have required a sacrifice that xe was loath to waste. To forget any piece of knowledge required other Mimica to take it away. To destroy knowledge required those Mimica to die.

  "If I am the last of us anywhere," xe concluded, "I still need to fight the Imperium, try anything I can to get the Collective back from them." Xe sighed. "And the resources I have there for fighting the Cewri, that all depends on my being Myrdu. I am not Myrdu anymore."

  Nifu nodded gravely, seeing the problem. "But in the short term?" she asked. "While you figure out a strategy? I know you have to go; that makes sense. But I'd worry about you finding your way on a new world with all of this still so fresh in your mind."

  Okka thought about that and snorted. "What would you have me be, that could roam freely in the Palace, where I've been the most comfortable? A fola? Let me tell you, it's not a safe or comforting existence, to be a palace fola."

  She sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I suppose you know your options best."

  Okka smiled with just one corner of xir mouth. "You're curious, though, aren't you? To see it happen?"

  Nifu looked away, the shadow of a smile on her face, as well. "I won't ask," she told xem. "I have a feeling you'd still do anything for me, wise or not."

  "Well, I can't keep this form, anyway," xe said. Xe summoned xir abilities.

  They did not come.

  Neither could xe feel that current of communication drawing xem to rejoin the Collective.

  The Paths were a between-place, not really meant to be a place in themselves. Even Avlans could sense that. They were never comfortable here. Time didn't really pass in the Paths, in a lot of ways. Myrdu and Nifu had tested, and plants that were brought here never grew, but neither did they wither, even without water. They could not injure themselves, even the pinprick needed for a blood test. But neither did injuries brought here from outside ever heal.

  It wasn't a shock, that shifting outward form was impossible. What was a shock was that Okka could not even reach for that switch that would take xem out of emergency mode and allow xem to take a non-humanoid form, or to touch the Collective.

  "I can't shift here," xe told xir daughter, frowning.

  Her eyes widened. "I suppose that does make sense," she said.

  It made sense, but the Collective was everywhere. Okka hadn't fully grasped before this moment that, in that sense, the Paths were nowhere.

  "It's like tuning your mind to a channel," Nifu had told him once. "The journals of past Ladies of the Glass always described it something like a primitive radio wave receptor, always trying to adjust the frequency a little to get a clearer picture, less static. But from the moment I stepped across the boundary, I saw clearly. Like I had a digital tuner built right into my head."

  Navigating the Paths required knowing where to go, and the Paths themselves were fluid, always changing. Anyone who knew the trick to it could step inside. Anyone who could not read their twists and turns would get lost, never to return.

  Hold on to the hand of a Lady of the Glass, and you had a chance. Hold onto Nifu's hand, and you would get to wherever she saw fit to put you.

  The realization that nothing else was truly in the Paths except things in that channel was a new one.

  No one but the two of them had ever seemed comfortable here. Perhaps other beings left some part of themselves Elsewhere, to be reunited with once they left the Paths?

  Atur and the other Avlan nobles traveled the Paths when they had no other choice. They'd always described the Paths as unsettling, eerie, less than solid or real. Myrdu had thought it hyperbole. He saw the Paths as a place, concrete, if not entirely comprehensible.

  Okka, now xe thought about it, could comprehend. Xe had a network of information at xir fingertips, but now that xe allowed xemself to pay attention to it, it was one that was not the Collective. It was, as Nifu said, on a completely different frequency.

  The implications of that bloomed in xir head. Here, the Collective's draw was quieter, because xe could not even reach for it. Here, xe could not merge with anything but the fola, and the fola was impossible to dislodge from the place xe'd made for it inside xemself.

  Here, no matter how xe slipped, or raged, or indulged in weakness, it was impossible for xem to return to the deadened Collective.

  "Are you all right?" Nifu asked. "Father?"

  "No," xe answered, a bubble of hysterical laughter threatening to escape alongside it. "No, not at all."

  So Nifu sat closer beside xem and let Okka wrap xir arms around her and cling and sob until all of that longing for xir people, all of that need to be with them again, to go home, had been felt. Not just acknowledged and accepted, but lived, and expressed. She cried, too, for she had enough of her own losses in all of this. They clung to each other.

  "I lived in their minds," xe told her. "So close. So sure, and so loved. They welcomed me home after every mission. Every one but this one."

  "I can't imagine having all that, and then losing it," she said. "All those people, so close to you. I only ever really had my father."

  Xe couldn't reassure her that she still had her father. Xe was not quite the same person. Nothing would ever quite be the same between the two of them, not for either of them.

  Time passed, as much as it ever did here. Quiet settled over them both, a peace xe hadn't felt since xe'd awakened establishing itself in xir mind.

  "I should go," xe said. "I have things I must do, and I'm sure that you do, as well."

  "Of course I do," she told xem, sniffling. "I just learned that the Cewri Imperium uses parasites to keep their subjects in line, and my father needs to know everything about them I can possibly find out, so that I can help him get the rest of his family back."

  Okka nodded in acknowledgement. "Thank you."

  "Where will you go?" she asked.

  "I won't keep this shape, but bipedal would be best. Let me see. There's always someone undercover on Earth, or one of the Centauris. I need a city to get lost in while I search for anyone else who might be left."

  "Your English is still better than your Mandarin or your Kintinnan," she mused. "Unless something's changed?"

  She was the one who watched the galaxy, learned all she could and coached Myrdu on her favorite languages when he'd been here.

  Okka went through xir stock of languages from previous lives to compare them with Myrdu's and shook xir head. "Kintinnan's changed too much since I was last on the Centauris," xe reported. "Even with their linguists keeping it in line. Yes, English is still my best, even if you haven't quite kept me up to date." Xe tilted xir head. "Besides, you know the Kintinne would turn me in to the Avlans if they caught even a whiff of Mimica on me."

  She sighed. "You'll be in danger on Earth, too."

  Xe smiled wryly. "Yes, but not that particular danger."

  They shared a look. They both knew all too well how Avlan forces dealt with Mimica.

  "New York, then," she said, and opened a window onto bright and frenetic city streets.

  The people, in all their different shapes, sizes, and colors, passed each other without a glance.

  Yes, xe could hide there for years, and no one would ever notice xem.

  A lonely existence it would be, if xe could not find other Mimica.

  Xe pushed that thought away. There was no alternative, and no time to ponder.

  "Call for me if you need me," Nifu said, standing beside xem, shoulder companionably against xirs. "I'll be waiting. And looking for answers."

  "Be careful," xe commanded her. Xe was still her father.

  She smiled sadly at xem. "You, too."

  Xe stepped through the mirror of a public bathroom in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

  Chapter Three

  The leather sofa cushion under Waverly's cheek was soft, rich, perfect. But this was one of the days when the perfection of his surroundings made him feel like
damp trash in comparison.

  Waverly was never enough. For the public, for the company, for his friends.

  For David.

  The breakup was old and worn, now, but on days like today he couldn't help but take it out and turn it over in his hands, like a smooth pebble. Think about everything he was supposed to be and wasn't. Everything he wanted and didn't have.

  All the things he could never give David. The person he could never manage to be for David. All the ways he was never enough. Never quite enough to be loved.

  They'd met, of course, in the stables.

  David had been dressed in plain rustic clothes, cleaning out the stalls for cash under the table. Waverly was one of the owners, had inherited the share of the place from his father. He was used to everyone giving him a certain amount of deference.

  When David critiqued his riding in unflattering terms, Waverly had snapped back at David's fashion sense.

  David had laughed, and said, "Well, maybe we all have things we're not the best at. But don't you want to get better?"

  David had done his best to help Waverly with his seat. In return, Waverly had helped David get his papers in order and helped him get into business school. David had taken to business school like a duck to water. Waverly had continued to be all out of rhythm with every horse he sat astride. Waverly Kemp had inherited his father's love for horses, but his talent with them had completely failed to follow.

  Living, breathing creatures had never been Waverly's forte. As much as he loved them, it seemed as if they never would be.

  He had many strategies for putting that out of his head. Most of them involved working. His newest kinetic interactive programs were at least somewhat diverting. But when he couldn't stand looking at the code on the computer screens for one more minute, he slumped over and stared at the wall in despair.

  "Don't be a mope," Toto said. "Get up. Do something. Cook."

  "Don't feel like it."

  "I found some great new recipes!"

  "No new recipes, Toto. I'd ruin them right now."