Strong enough to betray them. A prickle of anger made my skin itch. I took a deep breath, and said, “What about Siebeling?”
She looked away, twisting dark shiny strands of hair between her fingers. Suddenly she was the woman I’d known in Quarro again, frightened and uncertain. I realized how much she’d changed in the time since then—the confidence she’d found, the control of her psi talent and her life. And at the same time I understood that Siebeling had been the one who’d made her reach out again—not just because of what he’d taught her about controlling her psi, but because of the thing I’d felt between the two of them, a sharing and a healing each gave to the other.… I touched it again in her mind, and pulled away like I’d been burned. That was why she couldn’t answer me: because she couldn’t make how she felt about me match up with what he felt about me, and what she felt about him.
I lay back, not knowing what to say; staring at her but thinking about Siebeling … until it didn’t even seem like a surprise when I caught the pattern of Siebeling’s thoughts, and realized that he was coming here. Someone else was with him, a psion—a telepath—a mind I’d never seen the inside of.… But I had seen it before. Just once, on the edge of consciousness there in the Hydrans’ underground world. I sat up just before the door opened, and watched them come in.
“You aren’t supposed to be up” was the first thing Siebeling said to me. He was wearing a medical coat under his parka.
“I’m not,” I said, looking past him at the stranger. It was a woman.
“You were.” Siebeling pointed at the hospital monitor. “That lets me know everything about your condition. You’re recovering from radiation poisoning; your body can’t take that kind of stress yet. Don’t do it again unless you have my permission.”
My mouth twitched, caught somewhere between anger and laughter, because this was nothing like the meeting I’d imagined. But then the stranger caught my eyes. I stared at her; surprised. She looked like she belonged in a salon somewhere, not in a frontier port town. She wore a long, heavy gown; nothing fancy, but still it looked out of place. The hem was muddy. Her face had the kind of designed beauty I’d seen on rich women in Oldcity, like she’d had an expensive cosmo job done on it. She’d had her genetic clocks set back too, more than once; but she couldn’t hide the truth from me. She was an old woman: her mind was full of musty rooms. The look in her hard blue-green eyes said I’d done something to her, without even knowing her.
I felt her probe my mind, and knew it for a challenge—knew her for Galiess, Rubiy’s watchdog. I let her think she was getting a look right into my soul without giving her anything, using her own concentration against her while I tried to find out what she really wanted. I didn’t get much—she was a good telepath. But she didn’t catch me, either. That meant I was a better one—and that I had one less thing to worry about. I made myself look away from her and down, knowing that was what she expected.
“My name is Eva Galiess,” she said, satisfied; thinking she was telling me something I didn’t know. I tried to look like it was news to me. “And you are Cat. I assume you already know who we are, how we brought you here and why. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
“Not half as long as it seemed to me.” I glanced from Jule to Siebeling. His mind was like mirrored glass. I kept my back straight and my voice steady, knowing like I’d always known that when you were in enemy territory you had to hide any weakness. “And I guess I know what you want me for. Rubiy’s got bigger eyes than I figured.” I rubbed the bond tag on my wrist.
She nodded. “Yes, the Mines. Your time there makes protecting you worth any risk.… He was right about that much.” Rubiy’s image was in her mind, gone again. “And I don’t expect working for Contract Labor left you with much loyalty to your employers.”
I laughed once. “Not much.” I couldn’t help looking at Siebeling again. He was frowning, and holding his thoughts in a cage woven of perfect half-lies; I knew they were half-lies only because I knew the truth. Galiess already knew there was bad feeling between us; but it barely covered the deeper anger and fear in his mind as he waited for what I said next: “I told Rubiy I wanted in, before. I haven’t changed my mind. What do you want me to do—just name it.” I didn’t have to force the hardness in my voice.
“I only want you to obey Siebeling, for now. Nothing more is expected or required of you until Rubiy returns.” The way she spoke his name made it sound like one of the Nine Billion Names of God. “But you’ll need your strength back then. I hope your recovery continues to be as rapid.” While a hidden part of her mind she couldn’t control wished the Hydrans had never found me, never turned me over to them. I tried to get deeper into her thoughts, wondering what her problem was; could have sworn that what I smelled was jealousy—
I tried too hard. Suddenly she realized that I’d been playing with her mind. She made a sudden countermove, trying to get past my guard. I tied my mind in a knot and shut her out completely. She stared at me like she didn’t believe it. Then, tripping over the words, she said, “Dr. Siebeling has been told how important you are to us. I’m sure he’ll see that you keep improving.” She gave Siebeling a sharp, warning look.
Then she turned to Jule, and the look changed. “Why aren’t you at the spaceport, doing your job? Or do you find real work too demeaning, Mez taMing?”
“I brought Cat a meal.” Jule waved a hand at the food. “I always do.” The words were soft, her voice was even; she almost perfectly blocked the resentment that rose up in her. But I saw her eyes turn cold. “I’ll be back at the shipping counter when they expect me to be. If they have any complaints, they’ll let you know, I’m sure.” It wasn’t the first time she’d had to give those answers. Galiess didn’t miss a chance to bait her, and I knew from Jule’s anger that it wasn’t because she deserved it. Surprised again, I touched Galiess’s mind long enough to realize it was Rubiy she was thinking about; parroting his feelings like a brainwipe, his hatred and anger against the rich and powerful world she and Jule had both been born into. I backed off, as she said to Jule, “Remember where you are—and who.” She looked at us all then, one more time, before she left the room.
Jule and Siebeling glanced at each other, their faces grim and tight, with unformed questions passing between them as they waited. When they were sure Galiess was gone for good, Siebeling turned back to me, and I stopped thinking about anything but him.
He caught my wrist, the one with the restamped bond tag. “What the hell are you doing here?” The words dropped on me like stones. He didn’t really expect an answer. He let go of my arm again. I knew for certain then that he hadn’t arranged my transfer. Jule stayed where she was at the foot of the bed, her hands clenched in her lap.
I leaned back against the wall, trying not to let him see that I couldn’t sit up any longer. “Nothing personal. I just figured I’d rather freeze to death than drown in mud. That’s all the choice they gave me.… You think I came to Cinder on purpose?”
“I think someone saw that you did.” (Rubiy.) The name was as plain as if he’d spoken it.
My fingers hugged the plastic tag on my wrist again. “Yeah. It fits … it makes sense. He’s got the contacts to do that?” I looked up at Siebeling again, but he wasn’t listening.
His voice was so quiet when he spoke that I had to strain to hear the words. “The first thing you did when you saw me was try to tell Galiess who I really was. You just had another chance—why didn’t you use it?”
I winced, glancing at Jule. She was biting a nail. “I—I didn’t know what I was doing, before. I was sick then.” My own voice was hardly louder than his.
“You ought to be dead—” he murmured.
Blood sang in my ears, but all I said was, “Sorry to disappoint you.”
His face went white, and I realized that I’d read him wrong. Jule leaned forward, her anger and frustration suddenly back again. “You would have died, if it hadn’t been for him, Cat! No one else here understood
what was wrong with you, or how to treat it. You owe him your life.”
“Maybe he owed something to me.” I stuck out my bony wrist with its red band.
Neither of them answered that; and what lay in their minds wasn’t an answer, either.
Finally Siebeling said, with an effort, “I only meant that because you’re half-Hydran, you have a higher-than-human resistance to the radiation. And you heal more efficiently.”
“I know.…” I let my arm drop; it felt like lead. “You know what they say about cats—we all got nine lives.” They would have been safe if he’d let me die. He’d known that, too. “Maybe that is one of ’em I owe to you.”
Jule smiled, easing a little, but Siebeling still held himself rigid. I felt his thoughts shift focus.
“And I ain’t spending the rest of ’em working for Contract Labor!” I answered him before he could say it. “I ain’t going back to the mines. You might as well forget that right now. You heard Galiess—the psions need me, Rubiy wants me. There’s nothin’ you can do about it. You’re stuck with me.”
“We’re stuck with you?” Siebeling said, his voice rising a little. “Are you trying to tell me you still want to work with us? After what you tried to do?” I couldn’t tell whether he sounded sarcastic or amazed.
“You mean, after what you did to me.” I pushed forward, wrapping my arms around my knees to keep myself there. Suddenly I was really hearing his question, and wondering what the hell it meant to me. Did I still want to work with them? Was I crazy? I thought about the times, down in the mines, when I’d imagined how good it would feel to break Siebeling’s neck.
But then I looked at Jule again: sitting at the foot of the bed like a mediator, aching for an end to the anger and misunderstanding between Siebeling and me. And I saw the ways she’d helped me, trusted me, believed in me. And I thought about Dere Cortelyou tossing me a camph, telling me more than I ever wanted to know about telepathy or half a hundred other things, trying to make me understand why he even cared.… About working with the psions at the Sakaffe Institute; about feeling like a part of something for the first time in my life.
And the truth twisted like a knife inside me. I’d let myself get tied to these people, let my life get tangled up in theirs. It was just like it had always been—getting involved was hanging a stone around your neck when you were already drowning. But if fate wanted you to drown, there was nothing you could do.… I thought about Galiess and Rubiy, and tried to tell myself that I’d be crazy to trust either of them. But that didn’t change how much I could gain by working for them. And it didn’t change how much I could lose, working against them, for somebody who hated my guts.
I realized that the silence had gone on way too long while I thought it through. Finally I said, “Yeah, I still want to work with you.” I been a loser all my life. Why change now? I stopped just short of finishing it out loud.
Jule’s belief reached me like a smile. But Siebeling’s eyes didn’t change, and neither did his mind. He didn’t believe me; he’d never trusted me and he never would. “You’re a bad liar, for someone with your experience,” he said. He moved away from me toward the window.
“You got a lousy bedside manner.” I sagged back against the wall again, my hands clenched white-knuckled on the bedding. “Listen, I don’t give a damn what you think,” I said, putting all the strength I had left into it. “You’re stuck in this, and you know it’s not gonna solve itself. I can help you, if you let me—you ain’t gonna survive with Rubiy if you don’t.”
Siebeling turned; his disgust caught me behind the eyes. “You’re going to protect us from Rubiy?”
“I’m a better telepath now. Better than Galiess. You want to know how I got rid of her so fast? I just let her know that.”
A frown pinched his forehead again. He glanced at Jule; she looked at me, surprised but not really surprised. He said, “If that’s true, then you were a fool to let her know it.”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, even though I wasn’t sure he was wrong. I reached out for the cup of water on the table beside the bed. I looked back at him. (And you can believe it. I can make you believe it; I can make you believe anything if I want to.) I tore apart his shield and sent the thought straight into his unguarded mind. He jerked physically; the recoil of his thoughts hit me so hard the cup fell out of my hand.
Jule moved to pick it up from the wet floorboards. She filled it again before she said, very quietly, to Siebeling, “I tried to tell you.” There was no sharpness in it, but there could have been.
He kept frowning, flexing his long-fingered hands, searching for words; still searching his mind for the tendrils of my probe.
But I’d already let him go again. I was bluffing him, and I couldn’t afford to let him find out. I didn’t have the strength in me yet to hold out against him for long—even to go on talking much longer. But I had his attention now; I had to use it while I could.
“How?” he asked, finally.
“The aliens, the … Hydrans.” I lifted a hand to my forehead. “They went into my mind; they changed it. Healed it, somehow … all of them together, in a joining. That’s how they live—with all their minds bound together. And for a little while they made me a part of it. It was … it was…”
(Like coming home,) Jule thought.
I glanced at her, with the image moving like a bright bird through my mind. I looked at Siebeling again, at the blank wall of his resentment. “How’d they get involved with Rubiy? And why?”
“By accident. They had nothing to do with any of this, originally.” His voice darkened. “But they discovered the presence of human psions here, and Rubiy’s sucked them into it as deeply as he can, using them, letting them think he’s here to help them by overthrowing the mines.”
“Their ancestors promised them.…” I murmured. “What are Hydrans doing here at all? How did they get this way? Are all Hydrans like this?”
Siebeling broke my gaze. “I don’t know,” he said, lying. Old memories stirred in his mind, in a mass of tangled feeling.
“Come on, damn it. This is important to me. I know you know—you said you were married to one.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” His mind warned me away.
“What the hell’s wrong? I ain’t asking for your fucking life story—”
(Yes, you are,) Jule said silently, only to me. (You can’t help it.)
(What—?) I slid into direct contact, so much easier with her than words. I saw Siebeling’s face change as he realized what we were doing. (How? Why does he hate me, Jule?)
(He doesn’t—)
(He does! He’s hated me from the first time he laid eyes on me. Anything I try to do, he takes it wrong. I never did nothing to him!)
(It’s not you that he hates. It’s—)
I finished it for her. (What I am? Half-breed street trash?)
She shook her head without moving. (No! Not in the way you think. Her mind telling me at the same time that I wasn’t any of that. But he lost everything, Cat. His wife and son—)
(What’s that got to do with me?)
(Everything! It’s not you he hates; it’s himself.) And in less time than it would have taken to ask again, she showed me her answer: she showed me Siebeling as he’d been when he was young, barely out of med training, so in love with his proud, gentle wife and their green-eyed son that he wanted everybody to know it.
(He loved them), I thought, (He really loved them—?)
But his wife had dedicated her life to improving the way Hydrans were treated by the Federation. She’d gone back to her homeworld during a combine’s relocation sweep, trying to help save her people from being deported. Siebeling had tried to stop her from going, afraid of what might happen to her. But he’d only made her angrier; in the end she’d gone anyway, taking their young son with her. And she’d died—murdered, he was sure, even though he couldn’t prove it. Nobody knew whether the boy had died along with her or been transported with the rest of her people, w
ho’d been scattered over half the worlds of the Federation like dust thrown into the wind. Siebeling saw his wife’s body; but he never found out what had happened to their son. No Hydran he met knew what had become of the boy, or else they wouldn’t tell him; and the combines involved didn’t care. Siebeling never found his son.
(He blames himself. He thinks that he failed them because he wasn’t with them, and because he’s … human. Remember the crystal ball you stole?) I laughed, silently; she glanced away. (It belonged to his wife and their son. It was a Hydran thing, tuned to a Hydran mind. Only someone very much like them could make it change, the way you did. Seeing you reminds him of what happened, you make him overreact without meaning to, because you remind him of—)
“—Of my son?” Siebeling said out loud, shattering the clear wall of silence between us.
Jule froze; her face paled and then turned red as she realized what she’d done.
“God damn it, Jule—” Siebeling began. The rawness in his voice was like a wound; pain, not anger. Whatever he’d been going to say to her, he didn’t finish it. But something unspoken passed between them, and this time I was the one who was left out of it. The rigid, clenched way he held himself eased, almost against his will. When he looked back at me again, finally, I sank down into the corner, wishing I could disappear. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear what he was going to tell me, the excuses, the reasons why I—
He said, “When I finally realized that my son was gone forever, I just wanted to forget … what had happened, everything. I no longer believed. I stopped living, for a long time.” He looked at me like he was really seeing me for once. I felt his stolen memories stir inside me as they stirred inside himself. “Until the FTA offered me a chance to do real psionics research, to actually help psions in a way no one had been able to before. And then I met an Oldcity thief with telepathic amnesia, who always seemed to say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing, until finally I sent him away without really understanding why.… Maybe it was because I blamed you, for always making me remember things I wanted to leave alone. Because there is a resemblance. You have the eyes, and your age is about right.…”