“I hope you got that much time left.”
He looked back at me, startled into a frown. But he only shook his head and went out of the room.
The other bondie was coughing again. When he stopped, he tried to push himself up. He said, “When I was…” and then he collapsed, unconscious, and I never found out what he was trying to say to me.
I lay then and waited until night came again in the civilized levels of the complex. Then I let my mind loose into the nameless sea, searching for Jule. And she answered me at last, like she’d promised me she would. Everything was still all right. I caught the bright ribbon of her thought and fused it to my own.
Her mind wove into mine and I felt the joining begin. But this time she wasn’t alone. The cord of someone else’s thought wrapped itself around the strands of hers, and as her mind joined with mine, the joining was tripled. Before I could shape the hundred questions crowded into my brain, or even stop what was happening, the bright warmth that had begun inside me turned white-hot. Reality wrenched itself apart inside my head, the space behind my eyes filled with starbursts. And then the contact tore again, the way it had the first time.
Only this time it wasn’t just Jule standing by me when my eyes cleared. Rubiy was with her, and I knew then that time had finally run out for us. Jule’s face was full of quiet desperation; Rubiy’s burned with triumph. It throbbed inside me like the blood in my veins, and all I could think about suddenly was Cortelyou’s heart stopping.…
Jule kneeled down beside me. Her mind touched me softly; she forced everything out of her own thoughts but her concern for me.
Rubiy’s mind came down out of the stars as he looked at us. (Cat!) He focused his triumph, force-feeding me the giddy electric shock of his exultation until I had to put up a wall to protect myself. I lost Jule’s contact in static. He showed me my share in it all, my power, his approval, his pride: (Didn’t I tell you, when the time came, you would find the need, and make the joining? Even if it hadn’t worked out exactly the way he’d planned.)
Find the need. Suddenly I remembered what had made me find the need, just the way he’d promised. Pain gnawed my blistered back as I pushed up onto an elbow. He’d known—he’d known what would happen to me. I couldn’t hide my anger, didn’t even want to—
His mind flashed surprise and confusion, before it shut off like a switch. He didn’t know why I felt angry, why I resented it. (You suffered: You paid a small price for a great reward. We’ve all made sacrifices to reach this goal; only a fool would whine about them. Pain is nothing—learn to ignore it.) Like he’d learned to ignore pain, and every other shred of human feeling he’d been born with.
I didn’t try to answer. I glanced at Jule, who stood with her fists clenched and her mouth pressed tight. She was looking at the chain that held me on the cot.
(Then you begin to understand.) I felt his annoyance; I was spoiling the pure pleasure of his moment of victory. (You’ll understand everything when we’re through. You’ll know then that I’m right.) He turned back to Jule. (But first we have to complete our business with the Federation. The maintenance systems control center is on this level of the complex. We should be able to reach it directly from here.) He began to move away. Jule started after him, moving like she was stepping onto a tightrope.
(Wait!) I threw it into his mind. He stopped. (I want to come with you. Don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be like this, helpless, when it happens.) I wore my best victim face, hoping he could see it. (They hate psions.)
He frowned. (You’ll be safe where you are. You’d only get in our way. I’ll come back for you—)
(I’m fine!) Somehow I sat up, holding my breath. I was glad I didn’t have to lie out loud. (Like you said, I can learn to ignore pain. I want to be there when—when you take this place over for good.) I reached out to him, letting my swollen hand tremble a little.
His frown faded.
I put one foot on the floor; the chain on the other leg rattled. I kept my eyes on him, pleading, waiting, praying.…
He reached over and put his hand on my leg, let it slide down to cover the metal cuff. I felt the power focus in his mind.… The cuff fell open, and I was free. I sat gaping at it for a minute before I finally got up off the cot. The thought hit me that my whole life would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if I’d only been born a teek instead of a ’path. I laughed, without really meaning to.
Jule and Rubiy were both wearing miners’ uniforms, because the halls outside would be monitored. They were both armed. Jule’s hair was hidden under a security guard’s helmet; she was tall and thin enough to pass for a man. Rubiy took off his jacket and helped me into it. Even with the sudoskin the medic had put on my back, I thought the pain when it settled on my shoulders was going to be more than I could take. But I didn’t have any choice, and so I took it anyway. I sealed the jacket up the front, my hands and face wet with sweat. Jule watched my fingers, her eyes full of apology and relief. Neither of us alone could stop him, but together we still had half a chance.
I glanced at the other bondie as we left the ward. He didn’t even stir; his mind was down somewhere deeper than sleep. I wasn’t sure whether he was lucky or not.
Moving through the halls was no problem—because nobody here expected any problems, the security before you got this far was too good. We reached the systems center without anyone questioning us. When we got there, the entrance was sealed by an identity lock. Rubiy set his hand against the plate like he really expected it to open. He focused his psi against it, like he had with my cuff, and in a few seconds it hummed open. I glanced at Jule; a kind of dazed awe filled her mind. I wondered if Siebeling had ever even thought about using his Gift that way.
We went inside. The lights came up as we entered a room filled with more monitors and terminals and screens than I’d ever imagined seeing at one time. If living in Oldcity had been living like a parasite in the guts of some alien being, this was like being a virus inside a brain. No one was watching over it—it kept its own nightwatch, monitored its own systems, like a sleeping body. And Rubiy had come here to infect it.… And we’d come here to stop him. I was hardly even thinking about my back now.
Rubiy moved along the walls, forgetting us as he looked up and down the instrument displays. Jule touched her stungun, looked a question at me, not letting it form in her conscious mind. I glanced at the gun Rubiy was wearing, and back at hers. Jule and I had to make any move we tried at the same time. Our only chance to take him by surprise and survive would be if we could split his attention, hoping one of us could put him out before he could tear open our defenses and kill us. I raised a hand, (Wait), and let myself drift across the room. Rubiy was calling up data on a terminal. He finished as I stopped beside him, and looked up at me, pulling a headset off.
I managed a smile. “How’s it goin’?”
“Perfectly.” He reached into his jacket, and pulled out something sealed in shiny packets. “Now for the final step.” I followed him, as he moved to another section of instruments and began to feel his way over a touchboard.
“What’re those?” I pointed at the packets.
“Those are what we’ll be feeding into the air-conditioning system.” He didn’t look up.
I laughed. “It looks like candy!”
“I don’t recommend them. The chemical is a form of a sodium compound that was once widely used as an anesthetic—and a ‘truth serum.’”
I froze. My hand fell back to my side.
“They probably don’t taste very good.” He smiled, enjoying his own wit.
I laughed a little too loud. “How’s it work, anyway? How long will this keep everybody asleep? It’s not gonna last forever—don’t it leak out? What happens then?”
“The gas is harmless. We can keep them unconscious for as long as we need to, until everything is under control. This system is self-contained, the gas can’t ‘leak out.’ It purifies and recirculates the same air.”
“Won’t it clear o
ut the gas, then?”
“Ordinarily it would. But most of these systems have a regulator built into them—”
“So you can use them to gas people?”
He looked up at me just for a second, with his irritation starting to show. “I hardly think that was the purpose intended by the manufacturer.” He looked down at what he was doing again. “It’s used for air hydration control, mass immunization, disinfectants—similar functions.”
“Oh.” I let my hand drift out in a slip’s move that was so automatic it was almost instinctive. “Well, ain’t it gonna gas us, then?” My fingers closed over cool metal.
“I can bypass—”
I jerked his stun gun loose—(Now, Jule, now!)—trying to leap clear—
But my legs didn’t do what I expected. I stumbled, and in the same split second Rubiy’s arm lashed out and knocked me into the panel; I heard Jule cry out as her own stungun tore itself loose from her hands. I had one glimpse of the total rage on Rubiy’s face before the pain of my wrenched back blurred it out, before the same rage smashed into our minds. I felt my body shudder with the blow, felt my heart constrict and miss a beat as my mind barely blocked his attack. The stun gun had fallen out of my hands. Rubiy’s hands reached out—
I felt psi energy overload the circuits of my mind suddenly, sweeping all the barriers of my control aside, forcing me to join—not Rubiy, not Jule, not even human.…
Hydran. The combined strength of their mind poured into me, building inside me like the static charge of a lightning bolt. Rubiy fell away from me, his face changing, mirroring my own as I was transformed; no fury left on it, but only confusion and disbelief. I saw his power, saw it, shining around him like an aura—but it couldn’t reach me now. I saw Jule, too, her face slack with shock, her own psi aura haloing her. The whole room shimmered with lifeless light and whispered with silent noise. I didn’t feel pain now. I didn’t even feel human; my consciousness was like foam on a cresting surge of energy. Static crackled between my fingers, my hair lifted on an invisible breeze.…
I watched Rubiy lurch across the room to where Jule clung to the wall, too dazed by what was happening to get out of his way. He caught her in his arms, holding her between us like a shield—not knowing there was nothing I could have done to stop him.
And then suddenly something sucked me down into my own mind, made me forget them both; and all I could think about was where I stood now—in the Federation Mines, in this hell of misery and torture and slow death. All I could see was spending the rest of my life as a slave; all I could feel was the pain in my back, the betrayal, the suffering, the humiliation.… And suddenly I knew that I had the power in me now to make it end forever.
(Yes.) I spoke the word where only they would hear me. (Yes. I will.…) I felt them answer me; their mind took me into its circle for the last time, and visions washed over me like rain.… And I knew that what they showed me then would stay with me forever, too.
And then the lightning struck—through me, around me, below me … everywhere. I think I remember seeing Rubiy and Jule disappear together, before my vision turned inside out. I think I remember screaming.
The thunder followed, deep in the levels of the compound below me.
NINETEEN
LIQUID FIRE TRICKLED into my mouth, dripped down my throat, filled my nose with fumes that made me gag. Reaction caught me with a heavy hand and dragged me into the real world like a newborn. I was blinking and blinking, starting to wonder if I’d gone blind when suddenly my mind opened to the light. “What … what … where am I?”
Joraleman stood looking down at me like he thought my next question was going to be “Who am I?” and he wasn’t sure what the answer was. “In my office.”
I was lying on my stomach on a couch, staring at a holo of some other world projected on the wall behind him. At first I didn’t know it from the real thing. My eyesight strobed again, turning the view into a negative, and back. I put a hand up to my face. My head felt like it was ready to split in half.
“Here.” He pressed a cup into my hands, winced as a spark of static leaped between us. “On my homeworld we call this Holy Water. They claim it can put life back in the dead.”
I fumbled it up to my mouth and took another swallow. It was a lot like drinking molten lead. “If”—I gasped—“if it don’t kill you first.” I drank some more, a sip at a time. “How’d I get here? What … happened?”
He sat down on the corner of his desk and took a drink from the cloth-covered decanter, grimacing. My eyes still weren’t working right—he wore a halo of pale rainbows. “I found you wandering in the hall like a burnout a few hours ago. A lot of other people were doing the same thing, at the time.…” He shook his head. “You really were telling the truth.” I began to see how dazed he looked—like someone who’d seen the end of the world. “Needless to say, it was a shock, if not exactly a complete surprise, around here. But how the hell did it happen—I thought you said the terrorists just wanted a takeover.…” He rubbed his head, rumpling his yellow hair.
I didn’t answer him, because I couldn’t. I shut my eyes, trying to focus on the aching chaos inside. The last thing I remembered: I remembered being chained to a cot … Jule … Rubiy … the chain dropping away. The control room; Rubiy by the computer board, turning on us just as we were about to … And then something alien filling my head; my whole body like a jar full of lightning … I opened my eyes again. “It didn’t happen. The takeover Rubiy planned, it didn’t happen. We stopped him before he could use the gas.…” And then Rubiy had disappeared, and Jule with him. And I hadn’t been transformed by wildfire so much as I’d been a kind of transformer for it: knowing that if I thought the word, it would be set free.…
“But you didn’t stop them—they’ve destroyed everything!” He took another drink from the cloth-covered bottle.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The underground vaults have collapsed. Some are full of molten rock. Everything’s in ruins. Why would they do that? And what kind of weapon—” His voice broke off.
I took a gulp of my own drink. “Did … how many people were … killed?”
“Nobody!” That’s the damnedest part of it—nobody was seriously hurt.” He wiped his mouth; rainbows splintered and danced.
I sighed as the tension flowed out of me. Joraleman was staring at me. I said, “It wasn’t part of the plan.… It was the Hydrans.”
“The Spooks?” He straightened. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” I sat up finally, swearing at what it did to my back. Joraleman watched me, not saying anything, until I got my face under control. “Why do you think?” I said it again, meeting his eyes. “They knew what Rubiy was planning, because I told them. They told me they had to think about it … and they did. They decided to stop him; and they got what they wanted all along, too.”
He shook his head. “Why now? Why not a long time ago, if they were going to do it at all?”
Because they’d been waiting for a focus, a key … just like Rubiy had. And they’d finally found one.
(What happened to you?) But he didn’t say it out loud. Because suddenly he knew the answer. He looked down. “A higher justice,” he mumbled, and took another drink.
I thought about what would happen to me if he ever told anybody the truth. And then I thought about how he hadn’t even.… “You’re protecting me. Why’d you bring me here, instead of turning me in?”
He looked up again and his mouth twisted. “Because you were right. And because when I found you, you weren’t in any shape to answer a lot of angry questions.”
“How long was I like that?”
He glanced at something on his desk. “Close to five hours now.”
Jule. Jule disappearing, along with Rubiy.… I pulled myself to my feet. “We got to talk to somebody. The psions in the town, somebody’s got to stop them. Rubiy’s back there, and he knows—”
“It’s already been taken care of.” He held up a
hand.
“It has?” I swayed.
He nodded; the haze of distortion shimmered around him. “We got a radio call from somebody named Siebeling—”
“Siebeling!” I sat down again. “Is he all right?”
“As far as I know. All I know is we got his call right after the disaster, and he claims he turned the psions’ own plan back on them somehow. We sent out a security force. They ought to be back any time, if—” Something buzzed on his desk. He turned away, “Joraleman,” he said, speaking into the intercom.
I closed my eyes and stopped listening, concentrating on what I’d just heard. Siebeling was all right. Then somehow he must have gotten the best of Rubiy, and Jule must be with him. I wanted to find them, but my mind was too full of noise: too full of the suffocating fog of shock trapped here inside the dome, hundreds of human beings numb with it, filling all the levels of the compound; too full of the jangling static of my own pain. I quit trying and made myself relax.
Joraleman left his desk and went to the door, saying something I didn’t really hear. He left me there alone, and after a while I dozed off.
* * *
I don’t know how long I slept. I woke up again just as the door opened; knowing whose face I was about to see.… I got up from the couch.
“Cat!” Siebeling said. An aura shone around him, twice as bright as Joraleman’s. His happiness and his relief were blinding. I rubbed my eyes, realizing then that the light I saw around him wasn’t really light at all.
And then Siebeling was hugging me like a long-lost friend. I yelped and pushed free as the burns on my back came alive. Siebeling’s hands dropped; surprise and sudden guilt flashed around him.
Trying to keep my voice even, fumbling for a grin, I said, “Hey, Doc. You look like you’re really glad to see me for once.”
But his guilt only doubled, flashing crimson. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I enjoyed it. He took a deep breath, and said, “Jule told me everything.… Will you let me look at it?”