Though All the Mountains Lie Between Read online

  ***

  . . . They drove in a groundcar from the rigger hall to a cottage retreat where the dreamlink machine was located. They glided over the roadway in a gorgeous pink sunset. Jael steeled herself as they stopped, as they walked up to the retreat—a real house, not a multiplex—but Dap touched her arm, smiling. The gesture lent her enough strength to overcome her doubt and her suspicion; and she entered the house with Dap, moving about touching walls and banisters with nervous curiosity. In a small back living room, the dreamlink machine, a specialized type of synaptic augmentor, was set up—a half-silvered hemisphere which projected a golden glow when Dap turned it on. "We'll just let the field coalesce for a few minutes," he said. "Sit down and relax." He gestured to paired-off seats just at the fringes of the golden field.

  "What's going to happen? How will I know?" Jael asked nervously, thinking to herself, he's your cousin good old Dap and why are you worried, he knows what he's doing. Dap smiled at her question and leaned forward to touch her hand gently. His eyes twinkled, and she thought he was amused by her naivete, and perhaps being just a bit flirtatious.

  "You'll know," he said. "It's gentle." He settled into his seat, looking relaxed but eager, and Jael realized she was worrying about nothing, after all. Nothing.

  They talked idly, this and that about riggers and family, and Jael nearly forgot about the intensifying golden field in the room. Dap laughed, his eyes seeking hers, as he talked about his last flight—a three-system hop, fast and exciting, played in the net as skipping-stone islands in a tropic sea. It was a teamwork freighter flight with another rigger, and he hinted at the intimacy which underlay the teamwork. "It was the best part of the trip," he said, his eyes still seeking hers, holding her eyes a little longer than she wished them held. "My crewmate's gone out again," he added. "She left just the other day on a long haul. I miss her already. But I wouldn't give up that experience for anything."

  Something in Jael choked silently, but she tried to contain it, to not betray her envy. There was a warmth around her, though, a suffused glow that somehow made it seem less important to hide her feelings. There was a gentle feeling of release in her thoughts, and suddenly as she looked at Dap, she no longer heard his words alone, but saw visions directly from his mind, across the widening dreamlink. She saw the woman he'd rigged with, the flights of fancy across space, the sly querying interest he felt now toward her.

  Feelings stirred in her heart which she couldn't control, and before she was aware of what was happening, thoughts and images rushed up out of her mind like a fountain, and spilled glittering into space, into the dreamlink: glimpses of her half-brother steeling himself against their uncaring father, unable even to reach to his sister. Jael herself at her father's closed door, suffering and wanting and needing. Rigging an occasional flight alone, too lonely to dare to seek companions. The images rushed out, and so too did her anguish. Before she could stop herself, she'd released it all, glimpses of herself that she'd never meant to let any person see.

  In the dizzying energy of the dreamlink, the openness suddenly wrenched, tore—as Dap betrayed his dismay, that someone could release such staggering need. Betrayed his revulsion. Dap, who had promised understanding. Without a word Dap closed himself from the dreamlink, faded in the glow that now was a suffocating shield around a Jael who fumed with self-loathing and hurt. Dap no longer would look at her, and as she cried mutely in pain, he rose and left without her, left her there alone and desperate in the dreamlink field.

  She made herself her own last audience: she let her pain dance in the field like threads of fire, tightening around her like a noose, choking her, and no one here to help—there never was, neither Dap nor her father—they forgot their promises and closed the door, one just like the other. She wanted to kill them both, and she was going to kill herself with this hate if she didn't do something to—

  —control it—

  —bottle it—

  —which she did, wrapping it tightly around her finger and corking it back inside. And then when she was safe, while she was still sane, she turned off the dreamlink augmentor. And she returned to the hall where the riggers mobbed and brooded, looking for assignments. And a few days later she found Mogurn—

  —who offered her a job. And the pallisp.