She stared at me, looking tiny and miserable and alone.
“I’m sorry.” I bent my head. “It’s just that when you call me I’m the last to know, in a place like that.”
She still stared at me. The cab came finally, and I was glad.
We sat together in the Koss Tefirah garden. I asked her, finally, “Why did you call me, anyway?” Hoping there was a good reason, afraid of what I was going to feel like if there wasn’t.
“I was unhappy.”
My hand tightened over the stone arm of the bench. “About what?”
She shivered like a plucked string. “Nothing.” Her own hands twisted, always moving.
“About what?”
She didn’t answer. (Nothing.)
“Damn it, Ineh! You can’t tell me ‘nothing’ forever! Either you trust me or you don’t and if you don’t I don’t know what the hell I’m here for!”
“I can’t. I can’t tell you. I’m afraid—”
“For you or for me?”
“I’m afraid!” She crushed her eyes shut, and her fists, and her mind.
I unlatched my data bracelet, let it fall into my hand. “Open your eyes. There’s something I want you to see; I want to show you something.”
Slowly her eyes opened, and her fists. She looked at me, tensing.
I held out my wrist. A band of scar tissue circled it, naked and alien. “See that?”
She nodded.
“A bond tag did that.” I turned away from her, pulled my jacket up and my shirt loose. The sun felt warm on my skin; I remembered the feel of another sort of fire on my back.… I let her look at the scars. “That’s what it means to wear one.” I pulled my shirt down again, turned to face her. “I was shipped to the Colonies as contract labor. If it hadn’t been for the people who run the Center I’d still be there. I’ve been somebody’s slave, Ineh.”
She touched my wrist with cold fingers.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I must give a private performance.”
The words hung in the air between us like crystal beads. I felt the answer to the question complete its circle before I could even ask. The strangers I’d seen at the Haven, disappearing after the show, going on to something more—a private performance.
“It’s different than what you do in the show?”
“Different … the same … more.” Her hands pressed her arms inside her long sleeves.
“When is this next ‘performance’? After the show?” It was dusk already.
“Yes.” Her fingers dug into the flesh of her arms. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to—”
“Then don’t go. Stay with me. We’ll protect you.”
“No, they’ll come for me. They’ll find me; nowhere is safe from them!”
“Ineh, that’s what they want you to think. It’s not true, not if you don’t want it to be.”
“It is! I see it in their minds.”
I broke off, not sure any more whether she was fooling herself, or I was. “What about the Corpses? We could go to them—” Even the word left a bad taste in my mouth.
“No!”
I could have argued it, but I didn’t. Suddenly I was remembering Polhemas, and why he’d come to the Center.
Ineh stiffened where she sat, looking past me. There was no one else anywhere near us. “They’re coming. They’ll find us together. I have to go—”
“There’s no one—”
“I feel them!” She stood up, and I knew that in another moment she’d disappear.
“Wait, where—? Where can I find you?”
“In Ringer’s End. Thirty-Five—” She wavered, and was gone. I sat on the bench alone, waiting for whatever happened next. The stars were starting to show through, and a sliver of the lower moon. About five minutes later a middle-aged man and woman, upside gentry, came into the glade, walking slowly. They looked at me a little longer than they might have; but no longer than anyone dressed the way they were would look at someone dressed like me, in a park at dusk. They went on, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. Thinking thoughts I couldn’t hear. Were they the ones? Or were they just her fear showing; or just an excuse? I sat twitching until they’d passed, and then I went looking for a cab.
I got to Ringer’s End as fast as I could. For Oldcity it wasn’t a bad looking street; at least it was clean, and almost quiet. I could hear the sea. I found the building entrance, but no one answered when I buzzed. It was almost time for the Haven show; I couldn’t make myself stay there waiting, with no proof that she’d ever even been there. I left Ringer’s End and went to a weapon shop, where I got myself a stungun. Then I chased the hour across town to the Haven.
I went through the Haven’s doors again, hiking across infinity, not even noticing any more that I walked on thin air. Time mattered, not space—and time was shrinking in on me all the time. I sat down, leaning back away from the glissen mist, not wanting anything to dull my mind. My fingers beat seconds on the empty tabletop, out of rhythm with the gibbering background voices. I’d never noticed before how much like a dirge the music sounded.
At last the usual show began, and I held my breath until I saw Ineh coming out of her cloud of light. As soon as she was a solid reality I started, (Where were you? Where the hell did you go? What’s happening; tell me what to do!)
And in the frozen moment before she began, my waiting mind filled with an echo of numbers, a combination … I saw that it unlocked the secret of the invisible walls and would let me pass through. (Why? Why?) But she didn’t answer, and I couldn’t let myself wonder too much. There weren’t any answers now, only the soft whispering of her soul reaching out to me, the knowledge that in another hour someone might be using it for a private playground. The seconds crawled past me, space-time warped out of shape in this strange dreamland; her performance went on forever—and was over before I had time to realize it. The guests were on their feet, shuffling out, the room was darkening behind them.
I got up, stood trying not to look like I was waiting, until most of them were gone. The invisible wall was moving up on me, pressuring me to leave.… I said the numbers, and the wall of darkness swallowed me up.
Beyond it there was nothing but a corridor—blank, gray, empty. I blinked, shaking off the feeling that I’d walked through a wet, open mouth. At the far end of the hall was a door. I walked toward it, still not quite believing that I’d come this far. I put my hands into my pockets, feeling the stungun cool and smooth in my palm. The door at the end of the hall didn’t have a knob or a plate. I pushed it, and it swung open. Beyond it was more darkness—an alley.
I turned, looking back over my shoulder. Behind me, the entrance I’d come through had become a solid wall. I had the feeling it wouldn’t let me back again. And there were no other doors; at least none that I could see. (Ineh!) I shouted her name with my mind, but there was no answer. This time I wasn’t expecting one. I’d been shown the door, and Ineh—Ineh.… The door was still open. I went through it.
A heavy fist came down across my shoulders, clubbing me to my knees. Grease and grit skidded under my hands, scraping my palms, and then it was somebody’s foot in my side throwing me back against the wall. The hands on my jacket dragged me up, knocking me against the cold peeling surface until my brains rattled, pulling away and coming back to hit me again, everywhere, and I couldn’t seem to make any part of me work well enough to stop them.… Until the hands let go again at last and I slid down into the trash.
“Keep away from her, freak—” His foot in my ribs, underlining the word. “Or the next time they won’t find your body.” The foot came after me one last time.
Somehow I brought up my hands and caught his leg, twisted under him with his own motion and jerked him off his feet. He fell past me onto the pavement, coming down like a condemned building. I thanked God he hadn’t landed on top of me. I hauled myself up, the stungun in my hands; reversing our positions and a lot of other things. “Hold it.”
He was
trying to get his feet under him. He stopped when he saw the gun.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“You know who.” I tried to stand straighter and not listen to my body. “I ain’t got much time. Are you gonna make this easy or hard?”
He laughed, giving me the answer.
I could see the features of his face clearly now. It looked like he’d landed on it. I wondered how much he could see of mine. I grinned and spat blood. He knew what I was. If he was like most psi-haters—“Did they tell you what kind of ‘freak’ I am—did they tell you I’m a ’path, like she is? I can turn your brains inside out, read everything you ever thought of, back to the day you were born. It hurts like hell … I’ll make sure it does.” I grinned wider, hurting like hell. “You gonna give me what I want, deadhead, or do I rip it out of your skull?” I frowned like I was concentrating hard; watched his face turn to jelly.
“All right, all right!” His head dropped, but he was still staring up at me with white eyes from under his brows. “They took her to Kinba’s.”
“Where’s that?” I knew the name; I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Outside the city.”
“What’s the co-ords?”
He told me.
“Access codes?”
He told me that too; his voice wasn’t too steady.
I spat again. “You sure about that? Maybe I should take a look.”
“It’s true!” He threw his hands up again, shielding his face, as if he thought that could stop me. “Jeezu.”
I nodded. “Okay. I think I believe you.” I hugged my aching stomach with my arm. “Thanks, sucker.”
His own arms came down, and already his face was hardening again. “You ain’t a ’path! You didn’t even sense me waiting. You can’t—”
“I know.” I pressed the button on the stun gun with my thumb, and he went to sleep.
I went out to the street to find a cab. No one looked twice as I pushed my way through the crowds; a stumbling punk who drooled blood was business as usual in Oldcity. And the cab didn’t ask questions when I shoved the woman aside and got in, just, “Destination?” I let myself collapse as it took me up over the crowds, heading for the world upside; heading for trouble.
The cab carried me out a long way beyond the southward limit of Quarro, on along the thin peninsula between pincers of sea gleaming like gunmetal under the light of the two moons. I tried to keep count of the wealthy estates winking like stars, hiding in the darkness down below. I remembered seeing mansions on the threedy somewhere a long time ago. I ached all over and felt lonelier than I’d thought I knew how to.
After a while the cab dropped down again, and the world came back at me in a rush. An estate opened out below, like a holo-still blown up out of all proportion: I couldn’t quite make myself believe what I saw tumbling down the steep hill slope, layer on layer of broken crystal pulsing with light. The cab didn’t veer off as it came down; the codes worked.
And then I was standing on the landing flat, staring at my own reflection haloed by the cab lights—tiny and shattered, repeating over and over in the crescent of facing walls. A lens opened in the smooth surface, and someone came through. It was the hologram host from the Haven. There was no cloak this time, and I decided finally that it was a woman. “Are you real this time?”
She half-smiled. “You’ve seen my show. You didn’t like it?” She hesitated, as if she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “That stun gun you carry is useless here. This house is weapon-sealed, of course. So why don’t you toss it away.” She flicked a hand. The words were all hard surfaces and sharp edges, like the house behind her.
I shrugged, and took the gun out of my pocket. I threw it away into the dark, bloodstain-colored grass. I wondered how many other eyes were looking me over, all up and down the spectrum.
“This is a private estate, boy. Why are you trespassing here?” Her voice swatted me like a bug: not even worth a threat. I had to admire her ice.
I had to match it: “Ineh wants to see me.”
The flat line of one brow quirked. “Ineh? You’ve come to see Ineh? Then you’re that one…?” Her fingers darted out at me like a snake’s head. “All right. Come in and see her, then.” Her smile ripped me to shreds.
I smiled back, tasting a little more of my own blood. “Thanks.” I followed her in through the opening iris, jaws full of glass teeth; heard it ring shut behind me. I took a deep breath. She led me through room after room that probably made the Five Worlds Museum look sleazy. “You know, I used to be a thief myself. What did I do wrong?”
She looked at me; she didn’t smile.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else in any room we passed. This was the private estate of Farheen Kinba, one of the dark gods who ruled Oldcity’s underworld. I thought about what it would be like to live in a place like this all alone … knowing all the time that alone was the last thing we were right now.
We took a lift down and down into a part of the house sunk deep into the hillside. And there were all the rest of the bodies, the rest of the eyes that weren’t already watching me; there was even Kinba himself. They were watching someone else, through a wall of mirror-backed glass: Ineh.
The room she sat in was almost empty of anything else; the walls were a silent gray-green, and so was the carpet. She sat in a hard, straight-backed chair, its arms and legs carved with eye-twisting tangles of vine until it almost seemed to be growing up and over her, holding her prisoner.
And across from her in a cushioned recliner, not touching her in any way, lay a man. They both wore long white robes, like shrouds; but from what I could see of his heavy face and his soft, thick hands, he was somebody who was used to having too much of everything. His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t asleep. He was dreaming.… I watched his face, the expressions that stretched it, warping rubber; his body tightening, jerking once, shifting. Ineh’s face moved with her own shaping and sharing of his dream, but the emotions that moved it weren’t the same. Her body was as rigid as the chair that held it, trembling with strain. Her eyes were shut, and I saw the wet-silver tracks of tears lying on her cheeks.
I closed my own eyes, shut off all the outside senses I could—trying to reach what was happening out there with the one left inside. I felt whispers and mutterings, muffled cries, pressing my mind against the wall of glass that lay inside my own head. I held my breath, forgot my body and where it was.… Ghost images began to form, began to pull at me. Cold raw hands began to dig into my brain: This was a man with hungers that had never been satisfied, never could be. Hungers that had driven him to a position of power only a few others ever reached, given him all the pleasures that still weren’t enough. And now he had the powers of the Dreamweaver to play with. She wasn’t leading his dreams, she was following them, letting him fix the rules and being forced to play by them. The power he’d always wanted, to dominate and humiliate and use—the freedom that the laws of society kept him from ever really getting his fill of—all that was his now, his to dream about, with Ineh as his tool and his victim.
(Ineh! Ineh!) I screamed her name silently, trying to break through. But she was caught up in his nightmare; her mouth opened in her own silent scream. I pushed through the knot of watchers to the transport wall, beat my fists against it. “Ineh!” but the surface was solid, the sound recoiled. Ineh didn’t move.
Hands caught my arms, dragging me back into the real world. The group of watchers around me were suddenly all watching me, their faces half slack, half ugly. I realized they’d all been listening to what I’d just heard; a bunch of goddamn voyeurs peeping through the keyhole into somebody else’s mind. Two or three of the faces I recognized from the past, Kinba himself and a couple of Oldcity’s other first citizens, all looking businesslike and respectable in drapes of watercolor silk. There was a stranger dressed the same way, but looking uneasy. The rest I didn’t recognize; but I recognized the type.
And there was someone else in the
room, sitting to one side while the others stood, with a remote on his knees. Right now he was leaning forward, muttering some kind of message into it. He stopped, looking up, not at me but at Ineh again, and his eyes got glassy. He didn’t seem to fit in with the rest, and I knew the look on his face too well. He was a telepath—a corporate telepath. Some combines used them for security, though most were too paranoid to use a ’path who was good enough to really pick brains, including their own.
And this one was communicating with Ineh, getting messages that no one else here was getting.… I looked back at the stranger who was dressed for business, and suddenly it all fit. The Corpses were right: Somebody was using psionics to pick brains. It was happening right here in front of me, and the victim never even knew it. Ineh must have screened every crowd at the Haven, picked out the customers whose minds were crammed full of secrets to be sold to the highest bidder. And this was how she pulled them out.
Kinba turned to the woman. “Hedo, what is this?” He waved a hand at my face. He was wearing a sapphire as big as a cockroach on his middle finger. “Why did you bring him here?”
“It’s Ineh’s freak; he got past Spoode. I thought such determination ought to be rewarded. And I thought you might like to ask him how many others know he’s here.”
I saw Ineh slump over the far arm of her chair. I tried to pull free, but Kinba’s bodyguards held me with no trouble. I felt something slip over my wrists behind my back and tighten, pinning them together. Kinba smiled at me, a tiny twitch pulling his mouth against his perfect teeth.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” I said.
The hand with the sapphire ring slapped me. I shook my head, feeling fresh blood in a warm trickle down my cheek. “Mind your tongue or I’ll have it cut out.” His voice was white and cold like his face. “If you prefer to keep it, you half-breed abomination, perhaps you’ll consider telling us who else knows you’re here?” The rest of them had stopped watching Ineh, and their faces were grim.
I kept my own eyes on her, felt my body trembling. “The Corpses know. They know about the Haven and what you’re doing with it—”