“Wasn’t your jurisdiction,” Borosage said, looking smug. “The little son of a bitch hacked his way through the security programming. He sent a message to the Feds, telling them there was a cover-up, to come here and investigate us again.” He looked at me, his face contorting. “They’re sending another team—special investigators representing Isplanasky, the head of Contract Labor, for God’s sake!” His fists knotted.
Perrymeade swore under his breath. “Tau knew about this? When are they arriving?”
“They wouldn’t give us a date,” Borosage muttered. “But Tau wants the ‘breed put down before they get here.” Put down.… That was what they did to animals.
“Executed—?” Perrymeade said, as if it surprised even him.
Borosage frowned. “No. He’s caused them to lose too much face. We’ll take care of it here. But not before the freak tells us everything he knows about HARM.”
“Don’t bother.” Perrymeade waved a hand at me without looking back. “He won’t tell you anything. Nothing you can use. It’s not important now: the Hydrans are beaten, they don’t want any more trouble—they won’t cause any more, either. I have orders from the Tau Board that all sanctions are to be lifted, with no further pursuit of the terrorists. That was the deal we made. Hanjen himself gave me the information on where we’d find Joby.”
I raised my head in time to see Perrymeade’s faint smile twist the knife. “Yes,” he murmured. “He told me everything.… He couldn’t stand by and watch his people suffer any more because of you.” The satisfaction in his face turned to disgust.
Borosage glanced from him to me and back again. He deactivated the prod, tapping a rhythm on his thigh. “That’s too bad. I’m disappointed to hear that. But if that’s what the Board wants…” He grimaced and shrugged. “We’ll move on to step two. Fahd, take this genetrash out and dispose of it.” He jerked his head at me.
Fahd took hold of my arm and pressed his gun to my temple, watching Perrymeade for a reaction. Perrymeade’s mouth fell open; he shut it again, his eyes narrowing.
I tried to pull away, but there were too many guards still holding me. “I want a hearing!” I said. “I’m a Federation citizen—”
“Where’s your databand?” Borosage asked with a slow smile. “Where’s your proof?”
I froze, remembering: At the bottom of the river. “I’m still registered. I know my number—”
Borosage shook his head. “You threw it all away, freak, when you crossed the river. You’re nobody now, and nobody’s going to miss you.”
I looked away at the wall, keeping my eyes as empty as my mind.
He jerked me forward suddenly, making me swear with pain. “Nobody, freak. That’s all you are.” He let me go again. “Fahd.” He nodded toward the door.
“My pleasure.” Fahd hooked a hand around my arm and shoved me toward the exit.
“Wait,” Perrymeade said, the single word stopping Fahd in his tracks like a death threat.
Fahd dragged me back around as he glanced at Borosage.
“What?” Borosage snarled, with sudden suspicion.
“I have an idea.” Perrymeade came forward, his hands behind his back. He looked me up and down, not meeting my eyes. “A better idea.… See that scar on his wrist?” He pointed. “My niece told me he used to be a contract laborer. And he’s certified on a phase-field suit. He’s young and strong—why waste him? Bond him. Send him to the place where my brother-in-law is Security Chief. Burnell won’t ask questions.… The new team of Feds will come and go, but he won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”
Borosage’s eyes widened, as if even he had never thought of something that twisted.
“You fucking bastard,” I said.
“I want you to wish I’d let them kill you,” Perrymeade murmured. “I want you to remember what you did to my niece, and to Joby’s family, every time that you do.” He glanced at Borosage again.
Borosage nodded. “Do it,” he said to Fahd. “Have him bonded.”
TWENTY-SIX
“HEADS UP, BOYS—fresh meat.” The guard shoved me through the doorway of the barracks where the bondies slept. There was a sloping ramp just inside the door; it dropped out from under my feet before I could catch my balance. I slipped and fell, landing at the bottom in a heap. The door shut behind me.
I scrambled to my feet, trying to hide my pain and stupefaction as curious strangers drifted toward me. They all wore the same faded maroon coveralls that I was wearing now. All of them wore the same jewelry too—a red bond tag fused to the flesh of their wrist. I glanced down for the hundredth time at my own wrist, banded in red—the tag and the swollen, angry flesh around it. As I looked up again the entire world strobed red … the color of rage, of betrayal. The color of my worst nightmare.
Natasa hadn’t been waiting for me when I arrived: even Tau must have been decent enough to give him and his wife some time to be with their son. But the Riverton Corpses who hand-delivered me to the installation’s security made sure they dumped the data on me directly into his personal account, where it would be waiting for him when he returned.
Until then they were treating me the way they treated any other bondie—like meat. I took in the room and the laborers with a long stare, trying to keep my mind on the situation, trying not to panic. There were maybe thirty others in this barracks; a work-shift crew, probably, all working and sleeping on the same schedule. There were bunks for sleeping, and a doorway at the far end that probably led to the toilets. Nothing else, but it was more than there’d been where I’d worked before. At the Federation Mines we’d slept on mats on the floor.
Most of the others in the room didn’t even bother to look up. They lay in their bunks or went on playing square/cubes in a group at the back of the room. Only a handful of them drifted up to me, as unreal to my shuttered senses as everyone I saw now. But their bodies looked as solid as a wall, and about as friendly. I felt like I’d been thrown onto gang turf.
“What’s your name, kid?” one of them asked me, the biggest one. Probably the alpha male, just because of his size. I watched how he moved: he was heavy and slow. Probably a bully, depending on size, not skill, to get his way. I figured I could take him if I had to.
“Cat,” I said. At the mines no one had been curious about anything. They’d been too exhausted from overwork and too sick, their lungs wasted by radioactive dust. Nobody gave a shit whether anyone else lived or died.
This was different. I might even have convinced myself that it was better, except that they were looking at my eyes.
“Look at his eyes,” one of them said. “He’s got freak eyes—”
The others moved closer, peering at me. “What are you, some kind of ‘breed?”
“They don’t let freaks in here,” someone else said. “They wouldn’t trust a psion. A freak could sabotage the works, or spy—”
“Maybe he’s here to spy on us,” the big one said. “They put you in here to mind-read us, freak? Report on us—?” He hit me hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, right on the wound where Borosage had burned me with the prod.
I doubled over, gasping, straightened, bringing my clenched fist up with the motion, and drove it straight into his throat.
While he was busy retching I kneed him. I hit him with both fists on the back of his neck as he doubled up. He hit the floor and stayed there. I stood over him, breathing hard, watching the others hesitate. More workers joined the circle, drawn by the fight. I heard them muttering, spreading the news: They had a freak for a new roommate, what were they going to do about it…? They glanced at each other, working up the courage to move in on me. The noose of bodies began to tighten around me, all of them hating me without even knowing me, their Human hands and feet too ready to reduce me to something I wouldn’t recognize in the mirror.
A hand closed on my arm.
I turned, rage blinding me as I crushed the instep closest behind me with my boot, rammed an elbow into somebody’s eye socket, ripp
ed out a fistful of hair. I did it without even thinking, without even breathing—without feeling anything. Proving with every howl of their pain that I was as Human as they were.
With three more of them on the floor, it was easy to stare the rest down. “Don’t fuck with me,” I said, my voice shaking. “The next son of a bitch who touches me I’ll cripple for life.”
They backed away, slowly, their eyes never leaving my face. My own fear and rage shone back at me from every side, from all those eyes with round Human pupils. No one else made any move to see if I was serious.
The one who’d attacked me first stirred on the floor where I’d left him. I put my foot on his neck, put my weight on it. “Where’s your bunk?”
He glared up at me with murder in his eyes, but he pointed finally, to one near the back of the room.
“Find another one.” I took my foot off his neck and shoved a path through the bondies still watching around us.
I went to his bunk and lay down on it, turning my back on them. I huddled around the bone-deep, burning pain in my chest, biting my lips to keep from whimpering, until the pain had dimmed enough so that I could think about something, anything else.…
There was nothing I wanted to think about. I lay listening to the curses and laughter of the square/cube players, the random fragments of muttered conversation, until the lights went out for the night. And then I lay in the dark listening for a footstep, for the sound of breathing, a murmured word: for anything that might warn me they were coming to get me … for anything that would prove I wasn’t alone.
They didn’t come for me. And I didn’t sleep all night, trying too hard not to feel the pain … trying too hard to feel.
* * *
I moved out with the others at the start of the new shift, moving on autopilot, stupefied with exhaustion. I was all alone in my mind. I might as well have been all alone in the universe … until somebody I didn’t see shoved me as we moved along a narrow catwalk two stories above the ground. I banged against the guardrail; felt it shudder, squeal, and snap, as the support wrenched out of its hole. I flung myself back, throwing all my weight away from the buckled railing. I caught hold of the closest solid object—someone’s body—stabilizing myself.
“You fucking freak!” The bondie shoved me away; his elbow dug into my chest. “You trying to kill me?”
I went down on my knees, doubled over on the metal walkway, swearing helplessly with pain. He dragged me up by the front of my coveralls; the seal tore open.
“Shit. Oh, shit.” He stared at the festering burn his arm had just slammed into. It distracted him long enough for me to pull free of his grip. “Who did that?”
“Corporate Security.” I pulled my coveralls together again, sealing them up. The maroon cloth was stained with wetness from the weeping sore.
He frowned, shaking his head; his fist relaxed as he backed off from me. The others stared at me, sullen and silent.
“Look,” I said, trying to keep my trembling voice steady. “My telepathy doesn’t work. I’m not going to read your minds. I can’t teleport out of here; I can’t stop your heart just by thinking about it. In the last day and a half I lost everything I had except my life. Just leave me alone.”
One of the ones I’d beaten up last night laughed. I looked at their faces, figuring the odds, and knew that wasn’t going to happen. Unless— “I’m qualified to use a phase suit. I’ll be your point man,” guessing no one here liked reef-diving any better than the bondies I’d seen at the reef on the Homeland. Right now the odds of me being killed by another suit failure seemed a hell of a lot better than the odds of somebody knifing me while I slept.
“Tau doesn’t train freaks—”
“I’m from off-world.”
“What’s holding it up?” A guard pushed his way forward, taking the bondie’s place in front of me.
“I slipped,” I said.
He looked at the damaged rail, at the rest of the bondies, back at me. “You making trouble, freak?”
“No, sir,” I muttered.
The taser prod he carried came up until its energized tip was staring me in the face. “Be more careful.”
I bit off a curse, ducking past it. The others around me were already moving. I went with them, not looking back.
“I heard about him,” the one who’d shoved me muttered, glancing at somebody else. “He’s that one—the one that took over the suit from Saban, when he panicked in front of the Feds. Out on the Homeland. Right?” He looked at me.
I nodded, watching his hands in case he decided to hit me again anyhow. After a minute I murmured, “How’d you know about that?”
“They sent some of that work team here to fill out our crews when the Feds made their inspection.”
“Oh.” I’d been here less than a day, and already I’d proved that every suspicion I had about this place was true. And the FTA was coming back … but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it now.
TWENTY-SEVEN
A TRAM CARRIED us deep into the heart of the interface. It let us out in a spot I recognized, a work face inside the reef itself. I felt the reef even before I saw it—felt its eerie euphoria dance like heat lightning through my senses. I fought to keep my survival instinct functioning, not trusting myself or the mood I was in right now. It would be too easy to lose my mind in a place where no one could reach me.… If I ever gave in to the rapture, once I put on a field suit I’d be lost forever.
When the crew foreman called for reef-divers, my crew spit me out like a pit. At least they believed what I told them. I hoped it meant that tonight I’d be able to close my eyes for long enough to get some sleep.
The foreman looked at me twice, but only because he was expecting to see somebody else. “You cleared to use a suit?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Okay.” He shrugged and sent me with the others to pick out a suit.
I spent the rest of the work shift in inner space, moving through the mysteries of the an lirr’s thought-droppings. Staying focused was easier than I’d thought, because this time I knew to expect the unexpected … and because these suits had a feedback control I hadn’t been shown that let the tech on the outside give me a shock if I didn’t respond fast enough to his instructions.
I was a fast learner. After the first few zaps I held on to my brains for the duration, letting myself sense the reef matrix just enough to keep my mind from sensory deprivation. At least in here I still felt something; still felt alive.…
That night when I dropped into my bunk and closed my eyes, strange images and indescribable sensations still played my nerves like a ghost harper. I let them come, let them smother the burning ache in my chest that was worse than it had been yesterday. Sinking deeper into my memories, I saw/felt the cloud-whales drifting through the heights of the sky like indifferent gods … felt them settle around me, shrouding me in thought, until I was only thought, ephemeral, dreaming.…
* * *
The next couple of days passed without any more trouble. The bondies in the barracks kept our truce, as long as I put on the suit every new work shift without complaining.
I didn’t complain; it was all I had to look forward to. My personal future figured to be short and unpleasant. Even if another FTA inspection team discovered everything about this place, they wouldn’t get the chance to learn it from me. Natasa would turn me into organ transplants first.
Even if I lived through their visit, there was nothing left of my life. Reef-diving was the only thing worth living for—a chance to touch the unknowable, to feel my Gift come alive in ways that even I couldn’t begin to describe. What I’d experienced the first time I’d gone into a reef, or when the an lirr had come to me, hadn’t been a fluke. If the unknown suddenly reached out and killed me one day, at least I’d die happy.
My psi gave me something more that I hadn’t expected: It made me good at my work; better than other divers at guiding the techs to the kinds of protoid concentrations Tau w
anted to see. Once I got a sense of the sector’s feel, I began to recognize certain patterns in the stimuli the matrix fed to me and learned how to track them to their source. I stopped getting shocks and started getting praise from the techs. Having their respect seemed as alien to me as looking at my eyes still seemed to be to them.
Their respect didn’t make them like me any better, but that didn’t matter. The only people I cared about were on the outside, in the world I’d thrown away with my freedom: People I still loved, people I still hated. People I still owed, big time.
I repeated their names, tried to see their faces in my memory each day on the way to a new work shift; making it a kind of ritual to keep me anchored in reality as I put one foot down in front of the other, following the body ahead of me until it led me to where I was going. The pain in my chest was constant now, eating at my body and mind every waking moment when I wasn’t in a field suit, lost in the reefs.
This morning I’d come to sweating and dizzy. I hadn’t looked at the burn in a couple of days, hadn’t had the nerve to. I told myself it would heal, everything always healed, with enough time … anything that didn’t kill you made you stronger.
A hand clamped over my arm, making me swear in surprise. “You,” the guard said, and pulled me out of line. “Chief of Security wants you.”
Natasa. I groaned under my breath. Natasa was back. And he knew everything. Suddenly I felt dizzy again; suddenly I was sweating.
I went with the guard, went where I was told, because there wasn’t any other choice. We passed through sectors of the complex I’d never seen, passed excavation teams already working their assigned stations. Just passing by the naked face of the reef, I felt it seeping into my hypersensitized brain like my mind was as porous as a sponge. I let it take me, sucking my mind out of my body.
“Stop!” I said suddenly, stopping short.
“What—?” The guard turned back, his stare and his weapon both fixed on me.
“Stop the work!” I shouted at the crew foreman. “You’re going to hit a volatile pocket.”