Someone had come into the room, I felt—I heard it; and I looked up. Jule and Siebeling were standing there, each with an arm around the other. Siebeling’s left arm was still bandaged. “Hello, Cat.”
I grinned without thinking, but then I pulled my mouth down again. “What are you doing here?”
Siebeling said, “It’s no better, then?”
“No. I told you; it’s not going to get better.” I looked away, out the window again. “So what else is new?”
They stood there, invisible, for a while, before Jule asked, “Did you get your commendation from Corporate Security?”
“You mean this?” I reached into a pocket and pulled out the message ’cast, all in a wad. I’d been too embarrassed to ask anyone to read it to me; and then I’d forgotten about it. I smoothed it on my knees, and found my name printed at the top. “Is that what it is?”
Siebeling actually laughed. “And that’s all the attention it probably deserves.”
I smiled. “I’m tryin’ not to get a swelled head. What’s it say, anyhow?” I let myself admit how glad I was to see them; and the tension eased inside me.
“That we were the heroes of the moment, all over the galaxy—for about that long.”
“Sorry I missed it.” I looked away at the windows.
“At least we forced them to admit psions had done something to save the Federation, as well as something to try to destroy it.…” They sat down and told me more than I really wanted to know about what had happened because of us. “… So Galiess and the other psions will be in prison somewhere for a long time for what they tried to do, if they aren’t brainwiped for it.”
I grimaced, wondering how much worse their punishment would be just because they were psions. “What about the ones who put ’em up to it? There were combines backing Rubiy.…”
“And whichever ones they were, their identities died with him. Not even Galiess knew who his contacts really were.” Siebeling leaned back against the window. “The FTA has its suspicions, but they have no proof. Even they don’t have the power to act unless they can prove something without question.”
“There was no proof?” I looked at Jule, remembering what we’d both heard Rubiy say about her family and Centauri Transport.
“No.” She shook her head, answering the question I didn’t ask. “Some things are more important—some ties never come unbound, you never get free of them, no matter how much you think you want to. And maybe that’s only right.”
“I guess maybe it is.” I thought about Dere again. “But you saved their ass in a big way. Did it … did it make any difference?”
“Just a little.” She smiled, just a little. “They didn’t ask me home to take my place on the board. But they offered me a substantial settlement for staying away, to go with what the FTA owes us. That means more than they know.…”
“They bought you off,” I said.
She nodded, and she didn’t say anything more.
I leaned back in the seat. “So that’s it. That’s the end of it, huh?” The Federation kept going, because of us. And the telhassium supply on Cinder was safe because of us. The bondies were still dying there because of us, the Hydrans were being “investigated” because of us … and Dere Cortelyou was dead. I stared at the half-hidden scar on my wrist, and felt the new-made barriers in my mind come down to cover the old pain. Me, a big hero … I wadded up the commendation and threw it on the floor. “Fuck me,” I said, too softly for anybody to hear.
But Jule said, “Don’t you think that what we did did any good?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. If it meant the ones who run this stinking universe got some of their own from me, then maybe. But we didn’t change anything.”
“Maybe we changed something.” Siebeling touched Jule gently, and smiled. “And Cat—the Federation keeps going, because of us. That means that at least there’s something that tries to restrict the whims of a psychopath like Rubiy. This galaxy would be worse than it is—damn it, there’d be no end to the misery and pain—if there wasn’t something.”
I glanced up at him, angry. But his voice was bitter, and I realized what it meant for him to be saying that, after what the Federation had done to his family.
“By the way”—he looked past me out the window—“Corporate Security is looking for replacements for Cortelyou. They’re offering us an opportunity to do more work for them.”
“I ain’t Dere.” I shut my eyes for a minute, trying to see Dere’s face. “Are you—?”
“No.” He looked back at me. “Then I take it making the galaxy safe for hypocrisy doesn’t really appeal to you … either.”
“No. What are you gonna do, then? Go back to the Colonies?”
Jule shook her head. “We’ve been making plans for staying here in Quarro.…” With the money they were getting from her family and the FTA, they were going to work with psions. Not just the ones who could pay, like Siebeling had done before, but the freaks who really needed help, the ones in Oldcity whose lives were being ruined by what they were. And there were a lot of them; it was hard to be human and a psion.
I thought about Siebeling’s son, wondering whether he thought.… But then I knew that even if they never found his son, they’d find something that was worthwhile. I smiled.
“That’s why we’re here, Cat. We thought maybe you’d want to work with us.” More than just professional interest showed on his face; but I couldn’t read the emotion.
“Work with you…?” I stopped, feeling the smile go flat. “Just what you need, the walking wounded. Try and tell me from the patients.”
He said, “There’s nothing wrong with your psi ability; except that now you control it too well. You aren’t ready to use it again. And I can’t change that for you this time; because it’s not my right. You need to be in control, only you can decide what you need the most now. But I think you will be a telepath again, when you’re ready—when you’ve had the time that you need to heal.”
My hands made fists. “I’m glad I’ve lost it, I don’t care why. I don’t want it back! It’s too hard.…” To think I’d found everything, because of what I’d become … and because of what I’d become, to lose it all. The pain started and choked off again inside me. I couldn’t even feel anymore … because I’d already died. “I wouldn’t be any good for what you want.”
“I think you’d probably be very good,” he said. “More than anyone, you’ll never forget how hard it is—or how much it can mean—to be a psion. Even if you never use your talent again, there’d always be a place for you.”
I stared at the floor, eating a piece of sour candy.
After a minute I heard them get up, and Siebeling said, “It’s up to you, Cat. Whatever you decide to do, from now on, it’s finally up to you.” He smiled.
Jule caught his eyes; he nodded and moved away, leaving us alone together.
“Cat.” She touched my face; I saw her ring flash in the light. “I know…” Her hand dropped away. “But you didn’t lose everything. The things that drew us all together are still stronger than the things that separate us now. They can’t be changed, not for the three of us. You’ll always know where to find us. It doesn’t matter why you come—but come and see us, please. Don’t forget us.…” She turned away as if it hurt.
Siebeling came back again, and put his arm around her. He reached into his coat pocket and brought something out. He held out his hand, offering it to me on his open palm. It was the Hydran crystal ball I’d stolen from him once, somewhere in my former life.
I took it from his hand, my own hand slow and uncertain. It was warm, like a living thing, like it always was. There was a nightflower plant blooming inside it—midnight petals streaked with silver like the light of the stars.
“A promise,” he said.
I cupped the ball in my hands, looking up at him. For a minute I couldn’t even speak. Finally I got one word out: “Thanks.… Thanks.”
He nodded. I watched them start away to
gether. As they reached the lift, Jule stopped and looked back at me, biting her lip. I heard something in her voice that I couldn’t feel in her mind: “We never get everything we want, Cat … but sometimes we get what we need.” The lift chimed, its doors opened and closed, and they were gone.
They were gone, and it was a while before I really understood: that they were gone forever, this time. That what I did with my life really was up to me now. I was free, I was rich, I was … nobody again; like always, like I’d been at the start. And once I would have gone out to the Colonies, if I was rich; but my back was scarred, and I remembered too many lies. And once I would have searched for my mother’s people, if I was rich; but my mind was scarred, and I couldn’t face them—because I’d killed, because I wasn’t Hydran enough. And once I would just have done dreamtime for a month.…
The past was dead. The past was in a museum. And the price for bringing it back was too high … I couldn’t pay that price again, I didn’t have the strength. But I didn’t have the strength to forget. What was the use of a future, if I couldn’t stop wanting the past?
I looked down again at the Hydran ball in my hands, alive with captive light, potential energy, promise— And suddenly I remembered that final frozen moment in the mines back on Cinder, when the Hydrans left their farewell in my mind. They’d shown me the future—their future, my own future, splitting apart from that moment on: theirs blazing up in a moment of triumph, then fading to black; the fragile threads of possibility fraying, breaking, disappearing one by one.
And mine—blackness and ashes; but not an end, only a new beginning. The threads of my life tangled and frayed, but didn’t break. Weaving the pattern of the future they multiplied and grew until the choices I had were like the stars in the sky. And as grief started in me for the Hydrans’ loss, their hope for my new beginning had filled me.…
I tightened my hands over the crystal ball again. The nightflower would bloom in there forever, if I let it; but more strange and beautiful things than I could imagine would always be waiting for me to set them free. I closed my eyes, trying to focus, trying to call them out—
When I opened my eyes again, the nightflower was still there. Nothing had changed. Jule had said it: to be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you’d ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need. Now I had everything I needed to start over again, with even odds this time. Only a fool would throw all that away. This was the place where the past and the future came together: I held them both here in my hands.
Nothing’s changed—yet. But it will. I got a few lives I haven’t even tried on yet.
Psiren
… And a year later, Cat shares another episode from one of his nine lives …
PSIREN
I DON’T KNOW why she came that evening. Maybe it was for the reasons she gave me, maybe not. If I’d known her mind the way I used to, when I was really a telepath, maybe everything would have come out differently.
But I might as well have been a blind man, falling over furniture in silent rooms, with just glimmers of gray to show me there was still a world outside my own head. And so I didn’t even know she was there until I heard her voice, “Knock knock.” Jule never used the stairs, so I never heard her coming. She didn’t need to. She’d just be there, like some nightwisp who’d come to grant you a few wishes. I didn’t mind that she came in first and knocked afterward; we’d shared too much for that.
I climbed down from the sleeping platform high up under a constellation of ceiling cracks. “How’re you?” There was a time when I wouldn’t have needed to ask.
“Lonely.” She smiled, that quirky, half-sad smile. I stared at her, my eyes registering her for my mind because my mind couldn’t see her. Black hair falling to her waist, gray eyes deeper than the night; the bird’s nest of shawls and soft formless overshirts wrapping her long thin body. Protection … like mind layers. At least they were in bright colors now, pinks and purples and blues instead of the dead black she’d worn when I first met her. She was pushing thirty standards, had more than ten years on me, but she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Because I’d seen her from the inside. Nothing would ever change the feeling I had for her—not the future, not the past, not the fact that she was married to another man.
“Doc will be back in a couple of days.”
“I know, Cat.” Her forehead pinched; she was angry—at her-self, for letting need show.
“Somebody’s got to mind the mindreaders,” I said. “And you’re better at it than he is.” She glanced at me, surprised and questioning. “I remember how your mind works.” I shrugged. “So does Doc. You’ve got the empathy, he’s got credentials. So he hustles the cause, you hold the fort.” And I sit up here pretending to be one of his healers, instead of one of the cripples. “You’re lucky you miss him … and so’s he.” I moved two steps to the window set in the thick slab of wall. Looking out I saw the building straight across the alley staring back at me, black ancient eyes of glass sunk deep in its sagging face. I listened to the groans and sighs of the one we stood in; the real voice of buried Oldcity, not the distant music in the streets. I refocused on my own reflection, a ghost trapped inside the grimy pane—dark skin, pale curly hair, green eyes with pupils that were vertical slits; a face that made people uneasy. I looked away from it.
“Sometimes it feels like the Center is becoming my whole life, consuming me,” Jule was saying. “I need to break away for a while and let my mind uncoil. I wondered if maybe you felt that way too.” She wondered: Jule, who was an empath, who knew how everyone felt; who knew, who didn’t just guess. Everyone but me.
It wasn’t just the Center that was consuming me, even though I spent all my time here watching over it. It was the rotting emptiness of my mind. “I don’t have anything to uncoil.”
She looked at me as though she’d expected to hear that. But she only said, “You have a body. You ought to let that out of here once in a while.”
“And do what?” I tried to make it sound interested.
“Go out into Oldcity, see the parts I’ve never seen … parts you know.”
My skin prickled. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Prove it.”
“Damn it, Jule, it ain’t—isn’t anything you want to see. Or anything I want to see again.”
She nodded, folding her arms, drawing herself in. “All right. Then can you take me somewhere I do want to see? Give me a fresh perspective for a few hours, Cat.”
I dropped the print I’d been reading onto the windowsill. “Sure. Why not?”
She picked it up as I moved away, looked at the title. “CORPORATE STRUCTURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEDERATION TRANSPORT AUTHORITY.” She looked back at me, half smiling.
“‘Not bad for a former illiterate’?” I said. She blushed. She was the one who’d taught me to read and write. I picked up my jacket from a corner of the floor. Only a year ago. A lifetime. Forever. “You know something?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Stupidity is easier.”
She laughed. We went down the creaking stairs, through the silent rooms of the Center for Psionic Research, and out into the street.
The streets of Oldcity were bright and dark: the bars and gambling places and whorehouses were lit up like lanterns; the heavy glass pavements were inlaid with lights that followed you wherever you walked, down the narrow alleyways between the walls of buildings almost as old as time. None of the light was real light, it was all artificial. Only the darkness was real.
Oldcity was the core, the heart of the new city called Quarro, the largest city on the world Ardattee. Every combine holding on Ardattee had grown fat when the Crab Nebula opened up and made it the gateway to the Colonies. Then the Federation Transport Authority moved its information storage here and picked Quarro to set it down in, and Quarro became the largest cityport on the planet by a hundred times. Earth atrophied, and Ardattee became
the trade center of the Human Federation, the economic center, the cultural center. And somewhere along the way someone had decided that the old, tired colonial town was historic, and ought to be preserved.
But Quarro was built on a thumb-shaped peninsula between a harbor and the sea; there was only so much land, and the new city kept growing, feeding on open space, always needing more—until it began to eat up the space above the old city, burying it alive in a tomb of progress. The grumbling, dripping, tangled guts of someone else’s palaces in the air shut Oldcity off from the sky, and no one lived there any more who had any choice. Only the dregs, the losers and the users. It was a place where the ones who wouldn’t be caught dead living there came to feed off the ones who couldn’t escape.
I walked with Jule through the wormhole streets that tendriled in toward Godshouse Circle, the one place in Oldcity where you could still see the sky. For years I’d thought the sky was solid, like a lid, and at night they turned the sun off. I didn’t mention it, as we pushed our way through the Circle’s evening crowds of beggars and jugglers and staggering burnouts. But I looked up at the sky, a deep, unreachable indigo; down again at the golden people slumming and the hungry shadows drifting beside them, behind them, a hand quicker than the eye in and out of a pocket, a pouch, a fold. I felt my own fingers flexing, and my heartbeat quickening.
I pushed my hands into my jacket pockets, made fists of them. Once a Cityboy, always a Cityboy.… I felt Oldcity’s heavy rhythms stir my blood, make dark magic in my head; my body filling with the hunger of it. Hot with life, cold as death, raw like a wound, it left its scars on your flesh and its brand on your soul. A hollow-eyed dealer was sliding between us, selling the kind of dreams that don’t come true, in a voice like iron grating on cement. It still shows. They can smell me. I shoved him away, remembering too many times when it had gone the other way.