She took a deep breath, silent again for a long minute. She was thinking that (we’d find an answer, we would, we’d find a way.…)
“What did that Centauri spacer want?”
“Nothing. He was just.… He tried to get me to leave Cinder. He had a ’cast from my father, saying I was in danger.” Her mouth thinned. She wondered how they’d found her, how they could know unless they knew.… Her mind broke the chain of thought, sick with suspicion. “You said you wanted some information?” She forced the change of subject herself, this time. She spread her fingers over the terminal touchboard in front of her, trying to look calm.
I’d gotten enough from her thoughts that I didn’t bother to ask why she hadn’t tried to give the spacer a warning to take away. But if her family still wanted her safe … “Uh—information.” I’d only said it because I needed something to say; but now I realized that maybe I’d had a reason after all. “How often do ships come here?”
“Not often. Every few weeks Centauri sends a freighter—usually to bring supplies from the Colonies and pick up telhassium shipments. The FTA controls the traffic in this sector, and they keep Cinder as isolated as possible.” Centauri again. I realized she probably knew more about shipping than anybody on this planet.
“But there’s a ship in orbit here now. The one Rubiy came in on.”
She nodded. “For another couple of days. Why?”
“Dere—Derezady needs to know.”
“Why?” There was frustration in her voice.
“He didn’t say.” I couldn’t tell her any more; what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. “How do people get on board? Does anybody watch, or check?”
“Of course.” Another small frown formed, like a ripple on the face of water, and was gone.
“I’m not thinking of myself,” I said.
She glanced down, and nodded once. “The security guards check every passenger; and all the guards are Rubiy’s, so they double-check, to be sure Galiess intended the passengers to leave. But he knows that.”
“What do you need to convince them?”
“I don’t know.… Why don’t you ask Galiess?” Jule’s voice dropped to a whisper; her eyes looked past me in sudden warning.
I turned, almost forgetting to keep my hand clear, and saw Galiess coming toward us. She was wearing the same kind of heavy jacket I had on, and an expression that would’ve killed me if it could.
“What are you doing here?” Her hand closed on my sleeve, jerking me away from the counter. But she didn’t try to get into my mind. “Are you insane?”
“Jeezu. I was just looking around.” I tried to look stupid.
“Don’t lie to me.” But all she meant was that she thought I was hot for Jule. (You’re not invisible. While you wear a bond tag, you keep your face out of sight!)
“Okay. Don’t get so tight about it.” I pushed my hands into my pockets. “Look,” I said, trying to get back on safe ground, “Rubiy told me everything—”
“When?”
“Half an hour ago.”
(Already?) Her face reddened as she swallowed her anger. “Don’t talk about that here.”
I shrugged. “Don’t worry. But he told me what he wants me to do. I’m an important part of all this. I want to know more about it, I’m sick of bein’ shut up in a room. I ain’t your prisoner,” though I was not so sure I wasn’t.
But she nodded stiffly. “All right,” she murmured, her mind thick with disgust. I didn’t care what she thought about me, as long as it got me what I wanted. I glanced past her at Jule, saw the confusion and surprise on Jule’s face. I shrugged again.
As Galiess led me away, she looked back at Jule. “Isn’t one man enough for you?” The spite in her voice was as sharp as a spear. I would’ve laughed, except that knowing what I knew about her, and Rubiy, and me, somehow it wasn’t funny.
Galiess gave me the back-alley tour of town, what there was of it, introducing me to a few of the psions who were posing as shopkeepers and workers. She didn’t tell them what I was there to do; she said it would endanger the plan. But still I felt a kind of excitement running through them, as if they knew their long wait was finally coming to an end. Most of them didn’t pay much attention to me; I was just another hired brain. One or two of them looked at my face a little too long.
Galiess showed me what lay underneath the town, too: a network of tunnels and shielded rooms had been dug out beneath the buildings. They were used for storing the supplies the townies and miners needed to live—and now they were used for storing things that could make them die: weapons and equipment Rubiy had had smuggled in for his takeover. I asked all the questions I could, and all the while I was trying to find answers to the ones I couldn’t ask. By the time we were finally through I was so exhausted I could hardly see. I let it show, stumbling over my feet as I walked. I knew Galiess was satisfied, thinking she’d done what Rubiy wanted, giving me what I’d asked for—and making me pay for it.
When she left me at my room, I collapsed across the bed and lay there for an hour before I even wanted to move again. But it had all been worth it. Because I’d already learned everything I needed to know, and made all the trouble I was going to; and she never even knew it. It was so easy. I got up and sat by the window with half a bottle of strange-tasting leftover brew, listening to the music drift up from below and flipping the torus bead I’d stolen from her into the air—the thing that was Dere’s ticket out of here. I had the key, and I was going to be the answer to everything; but not for Rubiy. And when they learned what I’d done, they’d all be so grateful—Dere and Jule and even Siebeling. He’d have to see I wasn’t just the cheap gutter thief he thought I was. And Jule.…
* * *
The next day I found Dere picking at his food in the back room of the tape library. He looked totally burned out. After his wide-awake nightmare yesterday, I had a little trouble getting him to go for another walk but I couldn’t tell him what I’d done with all the psions and deadheads picking through the virtual loops out front. Most of them were bored out of their minds right then, but I didn’t want to be the one to give them something to think about. Not yet. I finished most of Dere’s food for him, and said finally, mind-to-mind, (Come on, you told me you needed to get away from it all.…)
His hands twitched on the scarred wood of the shelf where his food had been; his thoughts were jumbled. He got up then, and we went out the back. I made sure all the way up into the hills that nobody followed us, even with their mind.
“It’s safe,” I said finally, sitting down on an outcrop of blue stone.
“For what?” When he got out a camph, his fingers weren’t real steady.
“You want a way to stop what’s happening, Dere?”
He didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. Finally he said, “So you think you have one?” He almost didn’t want to ask, too afraid of being disappointed.
“I know I do.” I grinned. “There’s a ship in orbit right now. I know how you can get onto a shuttle at the starport. And I’ve got the thing you need to do it.”
“How did you learn—”
“I was with Galiess. I picked her brain.” I held my hand out, showing him the small brass bead with a square hole through the middle of it. It was from Galiess’s homeworld; she was the only one here who carried them. “She uses these as her marker. Give this to the guards at the port, and tell them you have to go up to the ship. Say, ‘Special check,’ and believe she sent you. That’s all you gotta do. They’ll let you by.”
“My God…” His gloved hand closed over the bead. He put it in his pocket like a jewel. “How—where the hell did you get it?”
“I picked her pocket, too.”
He stared at me like he didn’t believe it.
I shrugged. “It was easy. I’m pretty good. I had a lot of, uh, on-the-job training.”
He laughed, for the first time since I’d seen him here on Cinder, and clapped me on the shoulder. Suddenly he looked ten years younger, and fe
lt like it, too. “If I can get to that ship, I can transmit a warning directly down to the Mines.… What about Galiess? Will she miss this?” He patted his pocket.
I shook my head. “She’s got dozens. She’ll never miss one. But check out the ship’s crew before you trust them. Some of them may be playin’ both sides.… Just keep your brains together, that’s all you got to do.”
His expression turned to something I couldn’t read; for a minute he was looking at me like he’d never really seen me before. But then he took a deep breath and said, “Does anyone else know about this? Ardan, or Jule? Did you tell them about me?”
I shook my head again.
“Good. Let it stay that way. What they don’t know can’t hurt them. You can handle it.” He smiled. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one of us who can.”
“Yeah, sure.” I thought about Rubiy yesterday, wondering if I should tell him about my “interview.” But the memory of his death-sending was too close to the surface inside him, eating at his control. I was afraid to push it, afraid to say anything that would make him doubt himself now. “Just make sure the FTA remembers what side I’m on when they come to get us out of this, will you?” I held up my wrist, letting the bond tag show. “They ain’t been too grateful so far.”
He laughed again. “Don’t worry.”
“I always worry.” I let my arm drop.
(Because of you, I think our worries are finally over.) He grinned at me. (Thank you. Thank you.)
I smiled then too, felt the smile get wider and stronger as we started back down the hill; thinking that maybe I’d finally done something right.
THIRTEEN
I PULLED ON my sweater in a back room at the port hospital as Siebeling finished telling me, with all the enthusiasm of an undertaker, that I was just about healthy. Jule had told him everything about Rubiy’s plans for me and the mines.
But I couldn’t even tell him there was nothing to worry about. I took out a camph and stuck it into my mouth, just to watch him frown. I offered him the pack and he shook his head, frowning deeper. And then it happened. The pack dropped out of my fingers as the wave of cold terror flooded my mind—not my terror (fusion, confusion); somebody else’s, somebody I knew too well.… Cortelyou.
“What is it?” Siebeling’s face was full of surprise now.
“I … I … something’s gone wrong.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“I can see that. Are you in pain? What—” The words blurred into meaningless noise.
I covered my ears with my hands. “Shut up! I’m trying to hear something.” But the terror had choked off. There was nothing left for me to trace through the maze of too much mind noise that was the hospital and the starport beyond it.… The starport. He’d been close by, and a slip like that could only mean one thing. He’d tried to get to the ship, and something had gone wrong.
“Cat? Cat—” Siebeling was shouting at me. I focused on his face again, saw his eyes, felt his tension turn into fear. I couldn’t deal with it. I left the room, left him shouting after me.
I almost ran through the hallways that led to the starport; reaching ahead with my mind but not finding Cortelyou or any answers. I came out into the hall with the mosaic floor; but no one there felt anything strange now, no one looked angry or betrayed. Then I felt the touch of Jule’s thoughts; saw her in the distance, doing what she was supposed to, but letting me know by a whisper of feeling that she’d caught Cortelyou’s fear and knew something was wrong.
But before I could even answer her, someone was beside me. Rubiy. For a minute I thought he’d actually teleported into the middle of the starport. But then I realized that he’d walked in, just like anyone else—I just hadn’t sensed him coming. Somehow I managed not to jerk or shudder; somehow I choked off the panic that splintered my mind at the sight of him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Galiess warned you that it was dangerous.”
I tried to shrug. “I just … wanted to see Jule.” What did he want—what?
“See her in less obvious places. Come with me, instead. There’s someone else I want you to see. Something I’ve been waiting to show you.” He took hold of my arm. I turned away with him, knowing I didn’t have a choice. Could it be he didn’t know about Dere? Everything about him was as empty as a clear sky. But somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. “You’re on edge,” he said. His grip tightened a little on my arm.
“It’s an old habit.”
We left the starport and walked down the street a ways. The wind was even colder than usual, and the sky was a lid of heavy, mud-colored clouds. The streetlamps were shivering to life even though it was barely midmorning. It made me think about Oldcity. And then I was back to wondering about Dere, and trying not to. We reached the general store that Galiess had shown me a couple of days ago. It looked closed to me, but Rubiy unlatched the door and we went inside. The store was closed; no one was there. We went down into the storage tunnels.
Galiess was waiting for us, with a stun gun and a couple of psions I didn’t know—men, heavy and tough-looking, dressed in the uniforms of port guards. And Dere, standing like a rumpled bird between them, under the gun. I stopped dead at the foot of the steps as his eyes found me. “What—?” saying it to cover the sick lurch of my thoughts; knowing exactly what.
Dere swayed as he saw me—as his death-sending turned to reality. The guards took hold of him, holding him up. My hands tightened on the rough wood of the railing.
Rubiy turned to look back at me, measuring my reaction; I felt the minds of Galiess and the two guards beating against my control. “What’s goin’ on?” I said it again, keeping my voice steady. “Dere?” Dere, don’t give out, don’t lose it all now, for God’s sake. I didn’t even dare to reach out and share strength with him; I just tried to make myself believe I didn’t know what it was all about, hanging onto the confusion to save my life. Believing that they couldn’t know the whole truth yet or we’d all be dead. Wouldn’t we? Don’t even think about it! The muscles in my face were frozen; I felt like I’d come down with lockjaw.
Dere didn’t answer, either. The knowledge that his own death was looking back at him with my eyes turned his mind into jangling noise.… I realized that he was letting it feed, using his fear to block out the other knowledge that he couldn’t afford to let slip. He hadn’t been a telepath all his life for nothing.
“I’m afraid Cortelyou has more to answer for than he’s willing to admit to you,” Rubiy said. The confidence in his voice made my breath catch.
“I don’t get it.” I shook my head. “What’ve you got a gun on him for?”
“Because he tried to reach the crew of the ship that’s in port just now, and warn them about what we’re planning to do here. Fortunately he spoke to someone who works for me.”
I felt the bottom drop out of my thoughts, even though I’d been expecting it.… My idea, it was my idea. I turned it into disbelief, betrayal. “Dere, you did that? Why? We could—we could get rich.…” I mouthed all the words I should have been saying, while my eyes tried to read his face for blame. I didn’t set you up, I swear—choking off even the thought.
And the answer was there: that he knew, he didn’t blame me, I was only a tool of fate no one could control.… “For the greater good, Cat.” His voice was steady now, but his face was the color of chalk.
“You’re leaving out whose greater good,” Rubiy said mildly. “Derezady Cortelyou is a Corporate Security agent. I’ve known his real identity ever since Ardattee. I brought him here in order to be sure he remained harmless to us … and to see whether he betrayed anyone else from the Sakaffe Institute.”
“Since we haven’t learned anything yet, I think it’s time we stopped waiting and probed.” Galiess bared her glance at me, letting me know she was sure we’d all been in this with Cortelyou, and that Rubiy would see for himself when he took Dere’s mind apart.
I felt my eyes go wide. I turned the shock of his kno
wing the truth about Dere into the shock I ought to feel at hearing about it. “Dere, you’re a Corpse?” The words grated against the memory of my saying them for real. “How could you work for them—you’re a psion!”
He pulled loose from the guards’ hold and stood straighter between them. “Yes, I am a Corporate Security agent. I’m proud of it.” He met Rubiy’s stare for the first time. “I’m doing all I can to prove that a psion can live a normal life among other human beings.”
“You call it a normal life, serving as a lackey to the law that oppresses us?” Rubiy’s face came alive. “You’re a coward, a parasite, a traitor! We’re not human beings, and we never will be; not to the deadheads. If we want justice, we have to make our own!”
“Then you make yourself less than a human being—you can’t blame that on your victims.” Cortelyou lifted his chin, and I felt his mind fill with a kind of hopeless courage, the way Rubiy’s was filled with hate. Dere was challenging Rubiy, feeding his anger and making it hotter. “Two wrongs only make a greater wrong. We can only make the deadheads see us as no threat if we are no threat. They’ll let us live a normal life among them only if they aren’t afraid of us. We have to work within the law—it’s the only way. It’s the renegades who make them afraid, and bring down punishment on us all.” Dere caught my eyes and pointed at Rubiy, his hand trembling with anger—or fear. But none of what he said was meant for me.
“But it doesn’t work that way!” Rubiy’s own hand jerked like he was throwing something away. “I know it doesn’t—and he knows it doesn’t!” He glanced at me. “They’ll do to us what they did to the Hydrans if we don’t fight them. Cat knows what it feels like to crawl, to carry the hatred of the world on his back. He never had a chance at anything better because he was born a psion—even though he was born to be better than any human who ever lived.” And he wasn’t seeing me when he looked at me—he was seeing himself. “This is why I brought you here, Cat. You call this man your friend. But now I want you to see him for what he really is—a puppet, a traitor to his own kind, who wants us to lose everything we’ve worked for, everything we deserve. I let him have the freedom to do what he did because I wanted you to understand his crimes, and the kind of punishment he deserves. Do you understand?” The whipcrack of his voice stung me.