“Why is it important-to have me be hatani?”
“Is that your question?”
“I told you I would say when it was my question.”
“Well, I’ll tell you that one someday.”
“This is my question: Why do the things they make me see have the station in them and why is the station full of people like me?”
“That’s two questions.”
“It’s one. A hatani ought to see the unity.”
“Well, I’ll treat it as one. The station isn’t, it’s full of ordinary people, and I told you the truth, you’re unique. Probably the tests are making you dream in strange ways; it’s got psychological implications I’m sure the meds are interested in.”
“The experiment’s still going on, isn’t it?” (Gods, he’s twisted me up again. Everything. Everything’s an illusion, like the windows.) “Isn’t it, Duun?”
“That’s still another question. I’m not going to answer that. I told you I didn’t want to bring the matter through the door; I’d think you’d be glad of a place where people didn’t take your mind apart and play games with what you know.”
“Gods, tell me where that is!”
Duun smiled; or maybe it was the scar. “Eat. You woke me up. You can damn well eat the breakfast you made me cook.”
“It’s a language, Sagot. Why don’t they just tell me that?”
“Hush. I can’t talk about it.”
“What are they doing to me?”
“Thorn, there’s no way I can discuss it. Please.”
“I ache when I get out of there. I feel like someone’s taken me and twisted me inside out. I see things in my sleep. I’ve had the windows changed. It was stars. I’d wake up and not know where I was and I felt like I was falling, like the sleep-falling, only worse. It’s woods now, and sometimes Sheon’s woods in the rain, I can’t sleep without that. I wish they’d change that awful desert picture in the lab.”
“It’s meant to be restful.”
“There’s too much sky in it. It’s dead. I dream of a place like that and I don’t like it.”
“I’ll ask them to change it. I’m sure they will. They really try to be good to you, you know that.”
“They hate me.”
“Boy, they’re professionals. They have to be cold. Their minds are busy thinking what to do and they’re like all professionals, they get to handling people just like they push their buttons and expect things to work. They forget there’s a person attached to that leg and that arm because they’re looking down into their minds seeing on a different level, like how the veins and nerves run. On that level your body’s just a map with pathways going here and there, and I’m afraid they’re on those tracks without much thinking that somewhere up that network there’s a skull with a brain in it and a very anxious young man living there and watching and listening to what they’re saying to each other.”
(Sagot, you’re redirecting. I know that trick.
I’m a boy between two crafty adults and they keep me off my balance all the time. I get tired of fighting the storm. I just want to sink down and quit sometimes.)
“I’m thinking about killing myself.”
Panic. Sagot looked at him in shock. Thorn grinned and ached inside.
“I was joking. You’re very good at getting me off the subject. I thought I’d do it too.”
“Don’t joke about a thing like that, boy. I had a husband do that on me. I don’t think it’s funny at all.”
“Don’t tell me about your husband! You’re doing it to me again! I won’t listen to you!” He flung himself off the riser and stalked across the sand, headed out. Sagot was silent behind him. He got as far as the outside door, in the room with the vase and branch; and the door was locked. He hit the switch. Hammered on the door. “Open it up! I want out of here!”
There was no escape. Eventually he had to go back (as Sagot planned) into the room. But he sat down on the last riser and folded up his legs and studied the veins on his hands and ankles, which were distended in anger. Maps. Pathways. Sagot’s husband had probably killed himself, she was not making it up. She was sitting up there with an ungratefully rude boy sulking in front of her and he had struck at her in a hatani way. He had hit Cloen. He had hit