That makes sense. When I kissed an illusory version of him, I couldn’t tell the difference. Taste was involved.
Oops. Pom is turning coral pink on my wrist.
I wave my tube at Valerian. “Can you make mine taste like manna?”
“I can do better.” He rummages in his pocket and hands me a familiar manna packet. “I picked up some before we left.”
I beam at him. “Thank you.” As I take the gift, my fingers brush his skin, and Pom’s coral-pink color deepens.
Bebe and my father exchange a knowing look.
I stuff the manna into my mouth and enjoy it as the others swallow their goo.
Then I turn to Bebe. “So. Where is my sister?”
Chapter Seventeen
Bebe puts down her tube and sighs. “Asha lives with the Escapists.”
“I thought so,” Valerian says grimly.
“It makes sense,” my father says with a frown. “But I don’t like it.”
“Who or what are the Escapists?” I ask, puzzled.
Bebe looks at me, then at Valerian and Maxwell.
“Bailey doesn’t remember much about her life here,” Valerian explains.
“A black window?” Bebe asks.
“I couldn’t locate one,” I say.
Bebe strokes her wrinkled chin. “Asha also has a memory gap. She doesn’t remember Bailey—and more importantly, Max and Lia—and we couldn’t locate a black window in her case either.” She studies my father with an unreadable expression. “My theory about Asha’s memory loss is that it was caused by the pain of having seen both her parents become Overtaken.” Her gaze shifts to me. “That’s probably the case for the both of you.”
She might be right. That could indeed be the reason for my memory loss. My parents suddenly became slaves to an evil deity who wanted me dead. I’m an adult, and I wish I could forget all about it.
I pick up my tube and squirt some of the goo into my mouth. “Let’s get back to the Escapists.”
Bebe looks at Valerian. “Any suggestions on how to best explain them?”
“Start earlier.” He swallows some of the goo. “Maybe tell her the ancient history of Soma.”
Bebe looks thoughtful. “I can do that. Just bear in mind, this history is more like a legend. We don’t know how much is fact or fiction.”
I nod.
She waves her hand to encompass our surroundings. “As should be abundantly clear, we’re a space colony.”
“So it is a spaceship,” I say.
“Of sorts,” she says. “It was designed to sustain a population indefinitely, so in that way, not very different from a planet. Just smaller.”
I look around in wonder. “Is Soma flying somewhere specific? Is the plan to arrive at a distant star?”
“Sadly, no,” Valerian says.
“We’re orbiting a planet,” Bebe adds.
“A dead planet,” Maxwell says darkly. “Our ancestors’ home and the first world that Collywobbles destroyed.”
My head spins.
Bebe eats more of her food, the form of which makes more sense in the context of a spaceship. “Some legends also say our world is where he’s from,” she says. “They claim he was a dreamwalker who made humans worship him—and that the purpose of Soma was not just to escape, but to produce a dreamwalker powerful enough to defeat him one day.”
I realize my mouth is open, so I shut it before some space bug flies in.
Maxwell finishes his tube of goo. “They say the way Collywobbles became what he is today was by building a device that locked his brain in a state of perpetual REM sleep. His body was discarded in the process—and therefore, should he die in the dream world, he’d be gone.”
Well, that’s good to know. “What’s the best way to kill him?” I ask eagerly.
“Beheading would do it,” Bebe says.
“Except that anyone who’s gotten close enough to try that trick has been Overtaken,” Maxwell says bitterly.
Right. He’s speaking from personal experience. “Then what’s the solution? How do you behead him if it’s not safe to get close to him?”
“Something to do with that business of Two as One,” Maxwell says. “Hopefully.”
“Right,” I say. “And that brings us back to the original question of Asha.”
“I’m almost there,” Bebe says. “Early Soma colonists wanted to return home, and that meant defeating Collywobbles. There was a lot of training to that end, and some even married in ways that led to boosting dreamwalker powers in their children. After a while, a group of Soma residents got sick of such an onerous life. They didn’t want to deal with the big goal. They felt cooped up by the size of the colony, sick of the bland food and everything else. They decided it was unfair to be born into such a life, and that the rest of the Cogniverse should deal with Collywobbles on their own. As a result, they created a solipsistic dream world for themselves, and they live out their lives in there instead of the real world. Whenever they wake up, a group of illusionists use their powers to make the whole thing seamless for them, and they themselves use memory erasure to forget that the rest of Soma and Collywobbles exist. If they had a motto, it would be ‘ignorance is bliss.’”