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Twenty-nine

That night Tain dreamed. In the dream she was petting Lotta, and as she petted her, Lotta grew, became a fullgrown cat, then larger than a cat, until she was as large as a person—as large as Leolani. She was still a cat, still orange with green eyes, but now she looked sleek, her hair short like orange velvet.

Lotta spoke to her, not with her mouth but with her mind. «Welcome to your dreams,» Lotta said. They were not in the garden anymore, but in a place dark and indistinct, and vaguely threatening. Tain didn't think she'd ever been in that place in all the times she'd dreamed before, and felt ill at ease. Lotta told her it was all right; that whatever happened, she'd be all right.

«Are you ready?» Lotta asked. A place seemed to take shape around Tain, and she realized she was inside a spaceship.

And Coso was there with her. «Your homeworld is just ahead,» he said. «It's called Iryala. We'll be there in a little while.»

She watched out a window, wondering how he'd known the name of her homeworld when she didn't. It was as if they were traveling on a houseboat, with clouds below them. The ship settled through the clouds, and when they came out beneath them, there was a cottage, the house she'd grown up in, though it used to be an apartment. About twenty people were in the yard, her parents and other relatives, all waving and calling to her.

Coso opened the glass doors for her and they went out together. Her family hugged and kissed both of them, and she felt strange about it because Coso had come as a conqueror. She wondered if perhaps they didn't know.

Her mother poured them cups of some hot drink, and told her they all loved Coso, that people had been waiting for him to get there, and that his palace was all ready for him. And Tain had thought, of course. He's a good person. It had all seemed so natural.

They started to walk to the palace on a path that went through a beautiful garden. Tain felt happier than she had in her whole life before, and it seemed to her that she could remember all of it, her entire life, right back to infancy, that it was waiting for her to look at whenever she had time. Then she and Coso walked into the palace, and it looked just like their palace on Varatos.

«That's right,» he told her. «Your father had it made like that so I'd feel at home.» Then he kissed her, and it was the sweetest kiss she'd ever had. She felt so happy, it seemed to her she could never be unhappy again.

There was a meow then, and she looked around and Lotta was there, too, cat-sized again. She jumped onto Tain's lap, and as Tain petted her, Lotta began to get bigger and change again, till she looked like she had before, large and sleek.

«Are we going somewhere?» Tain asked.

«Yes,» Lotta told her. «You have more dreams to dream. I'm here to guide you.»

Tain wasn't surprised at all when a spaceship took shape around her. Coso was there, steering as if it were a car. It was dark and foggy out, and hard to see. «We're lost,» he told her. «This isn't Iryala. I don't know where we are.» After a little while they came to a village, and he stopped in front of a restaurant. A man came over to the car and Coso asked if this was Iryala.

The man was friendly and jovial. He said no, it wasn't, and asked them to come inside and have something to eat, so they went in. Inside were a lot of soldiers, and they grabbed her and Coso and tied their hands, and the soldiers' faces weren't human. They looked like pig faces. They took her and Coso back outside and stood them against a concrete wall, talking and laughing the whole while.

The one who'd brought them in was an officer, and he asked if they had any last requests. Tain told them she wanted to kiss her husband, but the officer just laughed and walked to where the soldiers were lined up.

"Ready!" he said. She could hear him say it. "Aim!" The pig-faced soldiers raised their guns. The guns didn't have any holes in the ends, and she thought it would be a joke on them when they tried to shoot them. "Fire!"

Beams of sizzling light came from the ends of the guns, and she watched from above as the beams burned her body up, hers and Coso's. The soldiers all laughed then; they thought she was dead, she and Coso. Coso grinned at her. "Next time we'll find it," he told her.

She turned and there was Lotta, as big and sleek as the times before....

* * *

Tain awoke to pale dawn, and the singing of birds in the garden outside their window. For brief seconds she wondered if this was going to be more of the dream, then decided it wasn't. It didn't feel like a dream, although she was disoriented, wasn't sure if she was still on Varatos, or if they'd already gone to Iryala.

Still only half awake, she closed her eyes again to sort it out. There'd been one dream after another it seemed to her, all night long. They'd gone to Iryala and been welcomed; and gone to Iryala to find all the cities destroyed and everyone there gone, leaving their killed bodies behind. And gone to Iryala to find the imperial army all killed; she and Coso had been put into a prison there that was just like a cottage, and they'd made love, a strange ethereal love that was like listening to beautiful music. Afterward she'd lain there and watched her belly get big and round, and she'd given birth to—Lotta! She remembered that, and then they'd been in a spaceship again. Time after time, good and bad, they'd gone to invade Iryala, so many times it was blurred, and all of it had seemed all right, win or lose.

Something moved on the bed beside Tain, startling her wide awake. It was Lotta, purring loudly. She climbed onto Tain's chest and began to knead a breast with tiny paws; Coso had gotten up and left the garden door open. Gone to drill with Sergeant Yalabiin, she thought, and putting Lotta aside, got up and went into the bathroom.

She tried to look at the dreams again, but they'd slipped away. Something about she and Coso going off to invade the Confederation. Something long and rambling, and not upsetting at all. Now in their place were the realities of yesterday and last evening.

The afternoon before, when she'd finished watching the cube, she'd felt deeply betrayed. The feeling was gone now, and it seemed that the dreams had something to do with that. But Coso had already weakened it, dulled it, when he'd talked with her last evening; there was something about Coso when he talked. When they'd come down from the roof garden, the feeling of betrayal had still been there, though she'd tried to push it away, but it had been much weaker.

She groped again for the dreams, without success. Then, tentatively, she tried to recreate the sense of betrayal. Not that she wanted to experience it again, but to see if she could get it back. Tentatively wasn't enough though, and she didn't really want to have it, so she didn't carry through with it.

She wouldn't worry about it, she told herself. After a stinging shower, she dressed and called for breakfast. She'd go to the library, she decided, and learn more about this place, these people, and indirectly about her husband.

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