10

It's Not a Cat, But It Can Catch a Mouse

Strider wakes, and for a moment she cannot think where she might be. Her head is still full of images of violence and suffering—of the coldness and the pain of a distant galaxy. She turns on the pillow, expecting to find a small furry body alongside her, but there is nothing there. Of course not. The cat, like everything else, was only part of her dream.

She knows where she is now: she is in City 43, on Mars. Last night she blew an interview and a bot called Pinocchio tried to mug her. She beat the shit out of the bot, which felt good at the time and still feels good in memory. Someone had to pay for the way she fucked up the interview so badly. No more thoughts of Tau Ceti II: that was an idle dream, soon dashed. She has a job to do, here on Mars, although just at the moment she can't remember precisely what the job actually is.

There's some clothing lying on the floor of the room in which she's been sleeping. She recognizes it as her own, and decides she'd better put it on. Swing her legs off the bunk—she has always been very proud of her legs, which are slender and well proportioned—and approach the clothing.

The clothing smells. She has been wearing it too long. That doesn't matter: no one is going to come close enough to her to know the difference.

Knickers. Bra. Jumpsuit.

Jumpsuit? A blue SSIA jumpsuit? Where the hell did she pick that up? Never mind. On it goes.

It's not just the clothing that smells: she does as well, and she rather likes her own smell.

The door of her room opens before she reaches it, which is, she recognizes, exactly as it should be. Outside in the corridor there are people intent on breakfast. She joins the throng. No one looks at her.

The dream she has had. A hell of a dream. She was halfway to Tau Ceti II when she was swallowed into a wormhole and found herself and her crew in a distant galaxy, The Wondervale. There she fought a tyranny . . . as if galaxy-wide tyrannies could ever subsist for more than a few years.

Her dream has been very vivid, though, and it is difficult to shake it off.

Two people are walking in the opposite direction from everyone else. They have their arms round each other's waists, and are clearly lovers: this couldn't be more plain if they shouted the information out loud. They were in her dream, and she knows their names. The big black guy is called Umbel Nelson. The white woman, only slightly shorter than the man she so clearly loves, is called Maloron Leander. Strider smiles at both of them, but they ignore the smile: they have never met her before, and are embarrassed by this street crazy.

A tall man is following behind them, with a wolf-like dog at his side. He is certainly more handsome than he ought to be, and in her dream she did, she remembers, make love with him more than once, although the details of their lovemaking are now lost to her memory. The dog looks up at her as if in recognition, but then turns its head away when the man angrily clicks his fingers.

So many people she recognizes from her dream!

She is walking along this corridor without seeming to move her feet. It is almost as if this were the dream and The Wondervale were the reality, but surely that cannot be true.

Another person she recognizes is coming towards her. He is an Asiatic of some sort, and around him there swirls a host of butterflies, some of them sitting on his shoulders and others swooping around his head. Which, thinks Strider, is the butterfly dreaming of being Lan Yi, and is Lan Yi dreaming of being a flock of butterflies?

Another tall woman, half a meter at least taller than Strider. This one stops and recognizes her. Her name, Strider knows, is Maria Strauss-Giolitto. Holding one of her hands is a small boy called Hilary; by an ankle rustles a cat called Loki; from a shirt pocket peeks a rat called Segrill.

"Maria, I know you."

"Of course you do, Leonie."

"Er, hi."

"Have you been dreaming?"

"Too right. Too much."

"Same here. Kaantalech's dead, isn't she?"

"That was the end of my dream. But I don't believe in dreams much. They're just bits of the psyche that have been allowed to get loose."

"Are you so sure about that?" says Strauss-Giolitto. "Come along with me."

Still seeming not to touch the corridor's floor, Strider follows the tall woman and the cat, who likewise seem to be floating just a little above the surface. They all pass through an airlock and find themselves outside the limits of City 43.

"Look up there," says Maria Strauss-Giolitto.

Strider obediently looks up, but for a moment all she can see is that there seem to be too many stars in the Martian sky.

"The Children of the Starlight," explains Strauss-Giolitto patiently. "They're here."