Free Loose Cannon by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

 
     
    A Matter of
Dreams
     
     
    ON SINTIA, it's the dreaming that first
marks a witch.
    A child will dream the minutiae of life,
relate the sending in the morning, all innocent and dewy-eyed;
astonished when the dream events turn true next day--or next
one.
    She's watched then, for grandma will have
contacted Temple, never doubt it; and after a time the child will
dream the name of the one she had been Before. Then she'll be
brought to Circle and trained to be one with the Dream.
    I know the way because Jake used to talk
about his Mam, my gran'mam, who'd Dreamed a Dream and had the
training and then left the Temple and who she'd been--for love,
Jake said, and for stars.
    I've never dreamed the naming-Dream, being
outworlder, even though witch-blood. I figure only the damned come
to me--those who died unquiet or outside the love of the Holy;
those who somehow lost their Name. I figure that, but I don't say
it. I dream the dreams and I let them go. Sometimes they come back.
Sometimes they come true.
    The first time I saw Her was dreamsight.
    She was in a port side bar--too coarse a
place for Her to be--standing straight in her starry blue robe,
with her breasts free and her face shining with power, black hair
crackling lightning and spread around her like an aurora. Her
eyes--her eyes were black, and in the dream she saw me. At her feet
was broken glass; the shine of a knife.
    She was young--not above fifteen--with the
silver bangles hiding half of one slim arm. But for all that, I
wanted to go down on my knees in front of her and lay my cheek
against her mound from which had sprung the worlds and the stars
and the deep places between. That's how it was, in the dream.
    But then the dream ended, as they do, and
there was Lil, yelling about orbit and was I conning or not, so it
was out of the cot and let the dream go and get about the business
of making a living.
    I never talked to Lil about the dreams. They
scared her, and there's nothing worth that. Still, she's
witch-blood too and knows as sure I do when I've dreamt, though she
never dreams at all.
    "Well?" she spat at me, spiteful the way
sisters are, within the protection of Us against Them. "Was it wet
this time?"
    "Keep it down and keep it clean," I
answered, no more gentle, because there was the flutter in the
nine-dial I didn't like, which meant relying on number eight, a
thing that had been a bad idea since I was co-pilot and Mam on
prime.
    "Where's the passenger?" I asked, because
there was a certain amount of care taken, when you'd been paid hard
coin to deliver someone intact to a place.
    "Webbed in gentle as a
roolyet," Lil said and I gave a grin for the old adventure, though
putting Mona Luki through the orbiting sequence was proving more of a problem
than usual.
    "Shit," muttered Lil, hands over her part of
the business. "We gotta get that reset before we lift, Fiona."
    "On Sintia?"
    "Federated port," she answered, which was
true. And, "Credit's good," which was not.
    "Yeah," I said, not wanting to argue the
point and have her start to worry. "We'll let our passenger off and
see if we can't patch it. Bound to be junkyards."
    "Flying a junkyard," she answered, which I
should have known she would. "Mam'd have a fit, Fiona..."
    And that was another line of thought better
left alone.
    "Mind your board," I growled, and she
sighed, and looked rebellious, and turned her head away.
    Tower came on in another few seconds, with
an offer of escort, if we had equipment trouble. I turned down the
escort, which was expensive, but requisitioned a repair pad, which
came gratis, they having noted trouble, and we got her down without
any bad glitches.
    Our passenger, that was something else.
    Cly Nelbern got her first sight of Sintia
Port there in screen number one, looked sour and flung herself into
prime pilot's chair like she had a right to it. Lil had her mouth
half opened before she caught my headshake, but I doubt Nelbern
would have heard a shout just then.
    I finished