I unsealed the jacket and shrugged it off my shoulders, gritting my teeth. I heard him suck in his breath.
“Second- and third-degree burns, and they left them like that—?”
“That’s the point.” I pulled the jacket on again before I could think about how much it would hurt.
He looked away at Joraleman, his face hardening. “This is barbaric. How can you—”
“It ain’t his fault,” I said. “He would’ve stopped it, if he could.”
Siebeling nodded, grim-faced. “Then will you help me see that he gets decent medical treatment?”
Joraleman was looking at patterns in the rug. “That might be … difficult, under the circumstances.” He glanced up, with his face red.
Siebeling opened his mouth, shut it again without saying anything.
“Where’s Jule? Didn’t she come with you?” I said, changing the subject to something I wanted to hear.
“No.” Siebeling looked back at me. “Isn’t she here?” His mind took a sick lurch. “Where’s Rubiy? What happened?”
“He got away. I thought you’d…?” But he hadn’t.
“My God, where the hell are they?” Panic leaped into his voice. “What’s he done to her?”
“I think maybe I’ve got an idea,” Joraleman said slowly. “I heard outside that we’ve lost control of the planetary shield. It doesn’t answer commands from the equipment here—and while it doesn’t, there’s no way in or out of Cinder. We’re trapped, like flies in a bottle. Somebody broke into the computer and tampered with the programming.”
“Rubiy,” I said. “He did something in the systems room. But how’s that tell us where he is now?”
“He could be at the transmitting station,” Joraleman said. “He could be controlling it directly from there, if he’s that good. He could still be holding this world hostage, single-handed.” He reached for the intercom on his desk again. “Maybe it’s about time we had another talk with somebody on top.… Joraleman here.” He’d called Kielhosa—the voice answering him was one I was never going to forget.
“… if they know so damned much about it!” Kielhosa was saying. “Why didn’t they stop it before, if that’s what they were here for?”
“But remember what the kid told me, Kiel: they were cut off, they couldn’t get a message.… Never mind, we can fill you in later. Listen, is Tanake back at the systems center? We’ll meet you there.” He broke off. “One more thing, a favor. Give me your word that whoever shows up, you’ll keep your mouth shut?”
Kilehosa grunted. “So it’s the kid. You know damn well he’s mines property. Is it him?”
“All I have here are a couple of Corporate Security agents. Well, what about it—have I got your word?”
There was a long silence. Then Kielhosa’s voice said, “You’ve got it.” He started to say something else, but changed it. “Make it fifteen minutes; Tanake’s not back yet.”
“Right.” Joraleman switched off, looking at me. “I owe you this much, Cat.… We can join the others at the systems center, that’ll give you all a chance to fill each other in.” Siebeling nodded, a motion full of angry tension. Joraleman shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid it’s the best we can do. Meanwhile, maybe you’ll join me in a drink?” He passed Siebeling a cup; the top of the decanter was full of them. I sat down and he filled mine again. I took a long swallow, trying to get numb from the inside out. Joraleman poured for Siebeling and poured some more for himself. “I’m Meade Joraleman, by the way. I’m Chief Purchaser here. I don’t remember our ever being formally introduced.”
“Ardan Siebeling.” Siebeling shook hands, trying to force himself to keep calm. I felt him groping for something to say, anything that would fill up his mind. “Frankly, you don’t seem to be very disturbed by all this…?”
“You mean, the fact that in spite of everything you tried to do, you are now sitting on top of the most expensive pile of rubble in this part of the galaxy?” He shrugged again, and sat down in his desk chair. His voice was slurring a little. “I’m beyond surprise, Dr. Siebeling.… And I have to admit this isn’t my first drink of the day. I’ve been drinking to my resignation. The nice thing about this stuff is that it doesn’t give you a hangover.” He leaned back in his seat, looking up at the holo on the wall. “Before you accuse me of leaving the leaky ship, let me assure you the idea isn’t a whim as of this afternoon. It’s been a while coming.” He glanced at me.
I said, “I’ll drink to that,” and I did.
Siebeling nodded.
Joraleman set down his cup. “We ought to be drinking to you. How the hell did you manage to subdue an army of psion terrorists single-handed, anyway?”
Siebeling looked at the cup on the desk. It rose a few inches into the air and hung there, before it settled gently back again.
Joraleman shook his head. “Of course.”
Siebeling didn’t even smile. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to concentrate, and told Joraleman about the underground storage tunnels. He’d put gas into the ventilating system, just like they’d planned for the mines, after everyone had gathered there for their final orders. He’d set free the handful of miners who’d been locked up in town by the psions, and they’d helped him clean up the ones who’d gotten clear of the gas.… He told the whole story like he wasn’t even thinking about it. He was thinking about Jule. So was I.
Joraleman grinned and shook his head again.
“So what’s gonna happen here, now? Are the mines gonna shut down?” I asked it to stop thinking about her.
Joraleman nodded. “They’ll have to, at least for the present. But don’t get your hopes up; the Federation runs on telhassium. We’ll be reconstructing, the faster the better. Time is money.”
“Oh.”
He held another drink out to me and I took it. “To the Spooks,” I said. I lifted my cup.
They looked at me.
“Just kidding.” I took another long swallow, looking at my bond tag.
Joraleman half smiled. “To a higher justice.…”
I put my cup down, starting to feel a little gorked, remembering that I was drinking on an empty stomach. The colors around Siebeling and Joraleman hurt my head. I leaned over and looked at my reflection in the tabletop beside me. It was only a reflection, no halos, and it looked like death warmed over. There were dark smudges of bruise around my eyes, like something had hit me in the face, and dried blood on my upper lip from a nosebleed I didn’t remember having. I looked away again.
Joraleman glanced at the clock in his desk. “We can go on down, if you’re ready.” Siebeling nodded, more than ready. Joraleman looked back at me. “How about you, kid?”
I shrugged, and wished I hadn’t. “Let’s go.”
We went to the lift and down a couple of levels. I wished it could have been up, but I didn’t let it show.
* * *
A handful of officials were waiting for us in the hall outside the systems center. One of them was Kielhosa. He gave Joraleman a dirty look and muttered something. I stopped behind Siebeling and didn’t look at anyone. They were all wearing halos to my mind’s eye, flickering like the night sky. Siebeling’s stood out like the sun.
Joraleman was making introductions. One of the guards said to me, “I’ve seen you somewhere, kid.”
I tried to stand straighter. “Ever been arrested?” I said. I frowned. So did he. He kept looking at me. I glanced away as Joraleman introduced the man named Tanake; the one he’d told me might listen to my story, once. Tanake looked at me like he really believed I was Corporate Security. If he wondered why I was wearing a miner’s jacket, he didn’t ask. I nodded. His hair was white, his face was aging; something about the lines of it made me think of the Hydrans. I glanced back at Kielhosa; but he was gone. I stared at the place where he’d been standing, trying to rest against the cold wall of the hallway. My body hurt like hell under the weight of my jacket, and my head hurt worse. Everyone was asking questions, but they were all a blur
to me. I let Siebeling give all the answers.
Finally Kielhosa came back again, followed by security guards. My legs almost gave out before I saw that they were guarding a group of prisoners and not coming to get me. One of the prisoners was Galiess, crowned with splintering light. She looked at Siebeling and then right at me, as if nobody else existed. Kielhosa was asking permission to question them about Rubiy and the planetary shield. Tanake agreed. I thought about what he could do to get answers, and my knees got weak again. Kielhosa gave a signal and the guards started Galiess moving again. Her eyes stayed on me as she passed. I’d never seen a look like that; never wanted to see one like that again. Her mind wove into mine: (I told him what you were, I told him to get rid of you; but he wouldn’t listen. He thought he knew everything; but he didn’t understand anything. And now you’ve ruined him. He should have listened to me.…) The contact was gone, and so was she.
I looked down. Siebeling and the rest of them had gone into the systems center. I followed them inside. The monitor screens looked out across piles of rubble like blind eyes, like the brain of a ruined body. The whole room shimmered with dim radiance, as if I could even see the life-force of machines.
Siebeling was standing with the others where the techs were trying to make the shield respond. The energy fog around him crackled, and I heard his voice rising, angry and impatient. I moved toward the viewscreens instead, too tense and restless to stand and listen. I tried to lean on the metal panel, jerked back as it gave me a shock. I kept my hands away from it as I looked from scene to scene: dust and broken stone and twisted metal all deep down below the room I stood in. Tiny figures moved through all the scenes, already starting to put the chaos back in order. I wondered how many bondies had ever stood in this room even once. And then I found a screen that looked out over the snow outside the complex. The crumpled, shining plain lay cold and peaceful between the scenes of ruin. The compound’s lights turned the snow to stars, and beyond them the night’s rippling sky turned it blue. I thought about Jule out there somewhere with Rubiy, and suddenly all that mattered was making contact; finding her, finding out what he wanted. I let my mind out into the dark.
And he must have been there, waiting. His mind caught in mine like a hook and I couldn’t pull loose, while he made me understand what he wanted. And locked inside his sending was another mind: Jule’s.…
And then Siebeling was beside me, whispering, “Cat!” His voice jarred me back into the room. “What’s the matter with you? You’re projecting, stop it—” The words were low and urgent; his mind was forcing me to remember where we were, and what these people thought of psions.
I waved my hands. (Will you listen?) I pulled my thoughts back together, and said, “It’s Jule—Rubiy, I mean! Rubiy’s got Jule with him. He just showed me where he is.”
Siebeling took a step back.
“He knows everything. He knows what happened here, and what you did. He’s waiting for us now at the shield transmitter. I could feel him thinking that he knew we’d try to come after her. It’s what he wants. If we don’t do it … he’ll kill her.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” My hands tightened.
Joraleman said, “One of the terrorists has the woman you were looking for?”
“Yeah. Rubiy, the one I told you about, who got away—” Turning, I backed into the guard who’d been watching me the whole time. I couldn’t stop the sound of pain it squeezed out of me.
Everything came together in his mind, I could almost hear it; he had hold of me before I could get away. “Sir!” He pushed up my sleeve. The bond tag stood out as red as fire.
“Shit.” I pulled away from him.
“We’ll straighten all that out later. Go on with what you were saying.” Siebeling said it quietly, as if nothing had happened at all.
I flexed my hands. “Rubiy.…” I couldn’t remember my own name by then. Joraleman looked embarrassed, and Tanake … Tanake said, “Go on, bondsman.” And I realized then that he’d seen through it all along; he’d known what they were hiding and tried to pretend he didn’t. But now … “I’m sorry.” He looked at me. The guard had his stun gun out; Tanake waved it away.
I nodded, and sighed. “Rubiy got away, the head terrorist—he’s the one who’s got control of the shield. He wants us—Siebeling and me. If we don’t do what he wants, he’ll shut off the entire shield.”
You could have heard a feather drop in the room. Without the planetary shield the radiation pouring in from outside would kill everyone on the planet’s surface in a matter of days. “He’ll just kill you, too,” Joraleman said finally, numbly. “What good is that going to do anybody?”
Siebeling shook his head. “We’re not helpless. Remember we’re psions, too. Give us this last chance to try to trap him. Help us, and we’ll help you.”
Tanake put his hands behind his back. “So if you answer his challenge, he may possibly let you get close enough to stop him.… If you fail, what will this madman ask for next?”
Siebeling shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“We have the weaponry to destroy the force barrier that seals off the control station—and the station itself, and anyone in it—if we have to.”
Siebeling’s face froze.
“You do that and you have no way to be sure you’ll get control of the shield back.” I read the worry that lay in the minds of his techs and said it out loud. “You want to risk that?”
Tanake looked back at me, startled, and then at the techs. “No. And I don’t particularly want to cause needless deaths, either. All right, Siebeling—if you want to take the risk instead, you can try it your way. We’ll give you any equipment you need.”
I took a deep breath.
“Bondsman,” he said. “I think I anticipate your questions. You’ve been poorly paid for your part in this. I wish there was something we could do; but now … At any rate, for the present I can leave you in the custody of Dr. Siebeling.”
I nodded again, my mouth tight.
“You’re free to go with him, then. I think you are needed.” He figured they wouldn’t have any trouble getting me back, if I lived. But I knew he was doing the best he could for me, and maybe that was more than I could have expected. “I only wish things could have turned out more happily for all concerned. Good hunting.”
TWENTY
WE WERE IN a snowtrack together, just Siebeling and me under the lightcurtains of night, following a course that would take us to Jule and Rubiy. Tanake had given us everything we’d asked for, including the ’track. Siebeling even knew how to drive one; but he didn’t know why I thought that was funny. I finished a cup of coffee from the thermal bottle, and glanced over at him again. “You want some?”
He started. He shook his head, looking out at the night. The halo of his thoughts still shimmered around him. He hadn’t said anything for nearly an hour.
So I said, “Doc?” He looked at me. “I see—light around you.”
He glanced down at himself, back at me. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head, not knowing how to explain it. “Even machinery glows, ever since the Hydrans … did what they did, at the mines.”
“It’s true, then,” he said, “everything Joraleman told me? I thought he must have been—exaggerating.” (Crazy). “The Hydrans focused telekinetic energy through you, to cause so much destruction?” He sounded like he’d never really be able to believe it.
“Yeah.” I put a hand up to my head. “Believe it. I was there when it happened, and I got the headache to prove it.” Somehow it didn’t come out sounding like a joke.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have given you something.” They’d let him treat my back, but I hadn’t said anything about my head.
“I didn’t want anything. I don’t want drugs; it could get in the way of my Gift if—when I have to use it. I can handle the pain.” I was handling it; Rubiy was right. Somewhere I was finding the control, because I had to. I wondered i
f Rubiy was going to be right about this meeting, too. “Don’t worry about me.”
Siebeling looked at me for a minute, and then he shook his head again. “And you’re seeing some sort of energy?”
“I don’t see it, exactly. I feel it, like colored noise. Humans more than anything else. Psions are like suns.” I wondered if the Hydrans saw the world like that, and I wished suddenly that I could see myself from the outside. “It’s … I dunno—”
“It’s incredible.” A part of him wished he could get me into a lab and study me. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. I think you’re probably very lucky you’ve got a mind left.”
“The Hydrans wouldn’t hurt me. They know me, they trust me, they think—” I broke off, my throat closing as I remembered the message they’d left in my mind. “The first time they saw me they knew I was alien, like they were; even though I was from the mines.” It wasn’t hard to say that, anymore. “It didn’t surprise them that one of their own people could come from outside. They remembered it from—way back. But the oldest memories are tangled up now. They don’t seem to know anymore what a lot of it really means.”
“They gave a lot to you.”
I touched my head. “Yeah. More than I knew.… They tried to make a joining with me, the first time they saw me. But with them a joining really is total, it’s every part of them, and I couldn’t do it.… I still can’t, really. There’s always things I want to hold back; even though they made me a real psion. They said it’s because I was raised like a human. Humans can’t let go of themselves and give everything that way; they ain’t strong enough.”
“You weren’t just raised like a human; you are human. As much as you are Hydran.” Like he thought I could forget that.
“My bad luck.” I frowned. “Anyway, I couldn’t take the joining, it almost.… But when it happened, it changed me, my psi … all the barriers came down.… And when it happened, I saw a lot of what they remembered. Are all Hydrans like that? Do they share everything? And what are they doing here?”
“I don’t know much about these people, really. I don’t think anyone does. Even to another Hydran the amount of telepathic communion they share would seem extreme—isolation and hardship have forced them so close together just for survival. Most other Hydrans lost any group mind practice long ago. If my wife and I had been that far apart psychologically, we’d never have … been what we were. But I do remember a few things. For instance, their belief in a god-being.…” He leaned back in the seat.