“What do you mean?” Knowing what he meant, that he’d seen it in my thoughts. “I didn’t—”
(The hell you didn’t!) His anger and frustration caught me from an unguarded angle, and hit me behind the eyes. (All right, shadow walker, you’ve been using my patience like a wall to hide behind; but you’ve finally used it up. No more camphs, no more questions, no more games until you show me some return.)
“Leave me alone, you bastard!”
(No more being left alone! You’ll never be alone again unless you make me leave your mind—)
“Get out, get out!” I pressed my hands against my ears, like that would do any good. He was through my defenses and on the inside, and I didn’t know what to do about it to get him out again.
(Make me.) His words echoed through the circuits of my brain.
“Damn you, damn you—” I was afraid that he really meant it, that he’d never get out of my head again. I groped for a weapon—not with my hands on the counter beside me, because my body couldn’t get at him; but somewhere in my mind, where I could. (Damn you! Damn you!) Feeling the thought leap like a spark across the gap between my mind and his. Suddenly making the connection, holding onto it, I completed the link of thought, (You fucking slad, get out of my mind!), with a jolt of white-hot rage. (Break, break!)
He broke contact: in the same second my mind was suddenly all my own again, my eyes saw him sway and clutch at a chair for support.
I swayed too, reaching out for the counter edge behind me. “Sonuvabitch.”
“Congratulations.” His own voice was barely more than a whisper. “Psion.”
“God.” I gulped, and wiped my hand across my mouth. A few more words slipped out, more curses, as I stumbled back to the table and sat down.
Cortelyou sat down across from me again. This time he tossed me the whole pack of camphs. “Here.”
I pushed one between my lips with shaking hands. Disconnected filaments pulsed behind my eyes—sign-posts, beacons, patterns that had lain waiting for me to turn my own eyes inward and see them.… We sat there for a long time, not saying anything; while I tried to make myself believe what had happened, while the camph calmed me down.
“How do you feel?” he said, finally. He was all solicitude, now.
“You should know.” I glared at him.
He shook his head. “I’m not reading you now; you know that.”
“Then how do you think I feel?” I looked away, wishing this room had a window.
“Proud … excited … like you’ve made a breakthrough?”
“No. Dirty, lousy—like a freak! That’s how you’re supposed to feel, ain’t it?”
“Did Goba tell you that?” His smile disappeared.
“He didn’t have to. Every time I get close to his mind, or any of them, I can smell it.” My hands tightened into fists on my knees.
Cortelyou grimaced. “Damn them, why can’t they—”
“Why shouldn’t they hate me? Who wants to have somebody else know everything you’re thinking? I seen people get killed for less than that!”
“And that’s why you’re fighting this every step of the way.” Half question, half answer.
I shrugged, letting him think he understood everything, when he only understood half of it.
“I’m sorry I was so hard on you.” He bent his head. “I should have known.…”
“Why should you be any different?” I wished he didn’t apologize so much; it got on my nerves.
“Because we are different. We have to be—not just because of what we can do, but because of the responsibility it puts on us. We do things with our minds that most humans could never do, and that makes them afraid of us. ‘In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.’ We have to live by a stricter code than the rest of humanity, to prove to them that they have nothing to fear from us.…” He leaned forward. “Do you want to know how I feel about my telepathy?”
No. But I didn’t say it. I shifted in my seat, hung onto its hard, curving edges to keep from bolting as I felt him reach into my thoughts again. I held my mind loose, let the sparking strands link with his in the invisible space where our senses met. I was shaking with the effort, and I felt his mind cringe with the fear I couldn’t damp out.
But he didn’t push me away. Instead the weave of his thoughts only loosened, like the first time, as he dropped all his defenses and drew me in. The impressions he wanted me to find shimmered on the surface of his awareness where I couldn’t help seeing them: he was proud, glad, grateful for the Gift that he’d been born with.… Psionics could lead to a new future for humanity, filled with understanding and free of the fear that fed blind hatred.… He would never abuse his Gift, never do anything to make the blind ones think of his talent as a threat.… He would do anything to gain their trust, to make them understand.
But behind the images he held like banners for me to see, I felt the brand of a fresh wound laid on him by some psi-hating corporate lackey—heard the murmur of a thousand other ghosts and shadows. Fury raged in some deep part of his mind, held prisoner by his will. And I realized what it cost him to be a corporate telepath, a missionary in a world of hate-filled deadheads who didn’t want to be saved.…
I broke contact. “How can you live with that?”
“What?” He looked totally confused.
“They spit on you, they don’t give a damn about what you’re trying to prove. It’s eating your guts out; why don’t you quit whoring for those bastards?”
His mouth fell open. “Where did you…?” His face straightened out again. “I’ve lived with it for years. I’m barely aware of it anymore.” It sounded like something he used to put himself to sleep at night. “I believe in what I’m trying to do. It isn’t an easy thing, but it isn’t impossible.” One hand clung to the other. “Haven’t you ever endured something unpleasant for something you believed in?” It was almost a challenge.
“Yeah. Staying alive—so I could stay alive.” The words slid out, just another smart remark. But then my own mind showed me things I’d done, and let be done to me, that would probably make him say everything I’d just said to him. “I guess you get used to anything, if you have to.” I looked down. “So long as you don’t think about it too much.” I thought about all his facts and figures, filling up his mind until there was no room for anything else to get in the way of his belief. And I understood suddenly why this research was important to him, why I was too, why he’d had to make that breakthrough today and force me to prove he was right. I thought about my being a telepath in spite of everything—seeing the lines of psi energy shining with life force. I thought about being born to use them: the Third Eye, the Sixth Sense, the Extra Ear … about a screaming thing locked in a cell somewhere in the pit of my mind … about thinking too much. I took out another camph.
“Do you know what a ‘joining’ is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a meeting of minds, between a telepath and another psion, so complete and unguarded that their minds become one—each open to the other totally, with nothing held back. Their psi powers are heightened, each one’s by the other’s; they do things they could never do alone. It’s the ultimate form of giving, of belonging. It’s like nothing else you can experience, and it can change the ones who join forever.…” His eyes were alive with longing.
“You ever do that?” I asked, because he expected some response.
“Once.” His clenched fists opened; I heard more joy and loss than I’d ever heard filling one word before. “A pure joining is very rare. It’s almost impossible for more than two human psions. It’s a combination of the highest ability and the deepest need.…” He looked up at me again, and his look told me I’d never experience it, unless somehow I could make my brain stop chasing its own tail.
“I can’t even imagine wanting to get that close to anybody.” I leaned back, away from him.
He leaned back too, and sighed. “Well, a journey of a thousand miles starts
with the first step.”
* * *
After that the steps got longer. Now that I could actually make contact with him, he began trying to teach me all the things he’d said I had to learn about controlling my talent. I didn’t see what was so important about most of what we did. But then, I didn’t understand most of what was happening to me here, anyway. I hardly even knew when I was confused, half the time.
He told me I’d had it easy working with technicians who weren’t psions themselves; their concentration and control were so poor that any telepath could keep them at bay. Working against another psion was going to be something else. He explained to me how trained telepaths could sort out the strands of image that patterned someone else’s thoughts; how they could locate one particular pattern, follow it along all its branching ways to their scattered ends and back again. He also told me how another telepath could protect that pattern by weaving a shield—burying it behind and between tangles of other images and information—or by sensing the probe and sidetracking it, braiding the intruder’s mind into a false strand, a lie. Most psions were better at protecting themselves from a mindread than normal humans, even if they weren’t telepaths, just because they were instinctively more in control of their own minds.
I was supposed to be a stronger telepath than he was. It should have been easy to keep him out of my mind. But I hadn’t been feeling my mind, exercising my talent—and he had. He told me that if one telepath knew the tricks of thought-tracking and the other one didn’t, the greenhorn couldn’t hide his deepest secret, no matter how much raw confusion he put up to save himself. Then to prove it, he’d make me nervous or angry. I’d forget what I was doing, and he’d walk right into my mind. He didn’t usually go very deep, but he didn’t need to. Using my telepathy never got any easier, and feeling him pry into me like that still drove me crazy. And then he’d jump on me anyway for letting him do it. For someone who looked so soft, he was as tough as steel when he was doing his job.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t trick him, and that just made it worse.
But in spite of everything, working with Cortelyou I finally began to act like a real telepath. Or I thought I did, even if nobody else did. But Goba didn’t have any time left to be fussy, he said, when he finally sent me to meet the rest of Siebeling’s psions.
THREE
THE PSIONS WERE sitting in a circle of chairs, maybe a dozen of them, in a pearly-walled room with a floor of patterned tile. One wall looked out on the sky here, too; farther up in the building, and higher in the air, than I’d ever been before. Siebeling was at the head of the circle when I stopped in the doorway. He frowned at me like I was late and said, “This is Cat. He’s a telepath.”
They stopped talking. I spotted the red-haired woman from the day I’d first come here, staring at me. I didn’t want to go into that room, and know what they were thinking, and be laughed at. What the hell were they staring at, anyhow—? But then I saw the woman with empty eyes who’d given me the scarf. She was watching me too, but her eyes weren’t empty this time; and suddenly I saw myself from the outside, clean and neat in a fresh smock and pants, looking like anyone else. I wasn’t dirty and dye-smeared now; they were all strangers here, too. A calmness came over me somehow, and suddenly everything was all right. She half smiled at me, and her eyes dropped. I went and sat down, at the end of the circle where all the seats were empty. I pulled a pack of camphs out of my pocket and stuck one into my mouth. Then I finally noticed Cortelyou sitting with the rest of them. He nodded at me.
Siebeling began to talk about how most psions felt afraid or ashamed because they didn’t understand their abilities, and society didn’t understand psions. Once they learned to control their minds the way they controlled their bodies, they’d see that they weren’t freaks; that being a psion could be a good, valuable thing. He called psionic talent the Gift, and he told them that it didn’t have to hurt them, that it was something to be proud of. Learning how to control the Gift was what we were doing here at the Institute. He was smiling all the while he spoke; pride and encouragement filled the words. I’d never seen him like that—it made him look like a different man. I watched other faces around the circle while he spoke, and some of them looked like they’d never smiled much at all, but they smiled now with him.
Afterward we started in on new exercises. Siebeling put a candle on the table behind him and said we were going to use our Gift to help us light it. He held a lighter up in the air and let it go; but it didn’t drop. He was controlling it with his mind, by telekinesis. It drifted past him through the air, and lit the candle. He blew the candle out again and tossed the lighter to the woman who’d smiled at me. “Jule?” I don’t know why it surprised me to learn Siebeling was a psion too. A lot of things suddenly made more sense about him.
Jule stood up, and then she was standing next to the candle, and then she was back in her seat, before I’d even blinked—she could teleport. The candle was burning, the lighter was on the table. Siebeling nodded; she looked down.
Someone else made the lighter float again, telekinesis, a little shaky; and then Siebeling was throwing it to me.
“What am I supposed to do with it? I ain’t a teek.” But he didn’t say anything. I sat there feeling stupid and angry, and then suddenly words filled my mind. (Fellow telepath. Ask me to light it.) I looked around the circle until I saw somebody grin at me. It was Cortelyou. I asked with my face but he shook his head.
(Ask me.)
His mind was open to mine. I thought, (Will-you-light-the-candle?) gritting my teeth.
He blinked. (Don’t shout. I’ll be glad to.)
I threw him the lighter. He reached over and lit the candle. Siebeling nodded, and tossed the lighter back again. It went on around the circle, and I started to feel like maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
And when the lighter came to the red-haired woman, she just got up and walked over to the candle to light it, as if she couldn’t find any other way to do it. That made me smile, but she didn’t look embarrassed.
Siebeling saw me grinning. He said, to everyone, “Darra’s talent is precognition—predicting the future. Psionic skills vary, just as artistic skills do. Sometimes your skill will be the only one that can solve a problem; sometimes it’s the only one that won’t. Don’t feel self-conscious if you have to do something the hard way—like the rest of humanity.” Everyone else laughed.
Later, when I couldn’t move a chair, and neither could Cortelyou, Cortelyou shrugged and thought, (There’s always the cards. We’re the only ones who can cheat.) I laughed out loud then, so that everyone looked at me, and the woman named Jule smiled again. And I guess I’d learned more than a couple of psi tricks that afternoon.
But then Siebeling said something while I was thinking about that, and everybody got up to leave. I looked across at Cortelyou and thought, (What?)
(It’s time for What to Do until Corporate Security Comes.)
I wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean, but I got up and followed everyone else.
It turned out to be another laboratory I’d never seen before. I sat down in a chair in front of a touchboard like everyone else, and someone at the end of the room began to talk to us about communications. He might as well have been talking backward for all the good it did me. I couldn’t understand anything: I sat and felt bored, rolling a camph between my fingers, until he began saying, “Touch the segment labeled ON. Now spread your fingers across the areas marked with…”
I stared down at the board in front of me, and put out my hand, and pulled it back. My skin started to itch. I can’t … Cortelyou wasn’t anywhere near me; I couldn’t ask him for help. But Jule was sitting next to me, she looked like she knew what she was doing. I tried to reach into her mind. She gasped and her hand went up to her face; her mind drove me out with a bright flash of terror. Then her gray eyes were full of shadow and surprise, staring back at me. She was as afraid of intruders as I was.
I
turned away, back to the display, my hands clenching. But it was already too late; Siebeling had seen it. He came up behind me, and I felt him look past me at Jule, and then down at the empty display screen, before he said, “What’s the matter?” I didn’t say anything.
“Touch ON.” Like he was trying to be patient.
I just sat there, feeling him get angry. “I can’t.”
“What?”
“He probably can’t read, Ardan,” the red-haired precog said, loud enough so that everyone in the room could hear it.
“Is that true?”
I nodded, barely moving my head, feeling like my neck would snap.
“Then I’m afraid you’re not qualified to—”
I stood up. “Why do I have to do this? This’s nothing to do with being a telepath! The hell with—” I felt a touch, like a soft hand somewhere in my mind, and then all of a sudden I shut up and sat down in my seat again, wondering. A voice said, “It isn’t a crime. I’ll help him, Ardan. Come on, Cat, it’s easy, watch me.…”
And I watched Jule touch a corner of the grid, because I was too ashamed to look anywhere else. The display filled with three-dimensional images. She turned it off, and then I tried it. After a minute Siebeling said, “If you can learn to do it, I’ll tell you why you have to,” and he left us alone.
“You can do it,” she said, not looking at me.
“What do you care if I can? Why should you help me?”
Her face changed; she looked up at me with those empty eyes and said, “I don’t know.” She shrugged. And she didn’t know.
I felt stupid and confused again, I was going to tell her to mind her own, but I just said, “I’m sorry, about…” and I touched my head. She nodded. I didn’t say anything more to her, but I let her help me.
Siebeling came back to watch me work after the others had gone for the day. He almost seemed disappointed to find me doing things right. “If you’re going to have this much trouble with everything, I can’t ask Jule…”
“But I don’t mind, Ardan. He wants to stay; I’ll help him.” She got up. “I have nothing else but time.”