Psion (11 page)

“I think I’ve met a truly inhuman being for the first time.” Jule wrapped her arms around her like she felt cold.

“Then you’ve been real lucky,” I muttered.
Inhuman, nonhuman, alien.
My eyes . . . what about my eyes?

“We should find Ardan.” Jule started to get up. “Tell him. . . .”

I shrugged. “Rubiy’s probably doing it for you, right now.”

“We’d never be able to hold him here, anyway.” She shook her head. “But he won’t tell Ardan he’s Quicksilver; Ardan won’t know who he’s really dealing with. He doesn’t have the talent for reading-“

“He’ll be all right. Rubiy won’t try anything here, either. Besides, Siebeling’s got a good nose for scum.” I folded my own arms, looking away. “At least that’s what he’s always telling me.”

She settled back onto the seat again. “Don’t.” The tiny frown line came back between her eyes as she read my feelings. “Not now. If we can’t hold together now-“

I didn’t try to shield it. (It ain’t my fault!) “Siebeling’s the one who’s always making it hard. You know it ain’t me”-I realized suddenly what I was saying-“you know it, Jule. Don’t you . . . ?” I leaned toward her.

She nodded, pressing her mouth together. “Yes, I know.” Her voice almost disappeared again. “But try . . .
try
not to hate him, Cat. He’s bleeding inside, there’s something so sad, so terribly deep. . . .” She reached up like she could pull it out of the air. “I don’t know what it is
yet,
it’s too broken, too buried. But something about you . . .” She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “He doesn’t mean to.”

“That’s supposed to make a difference? That’s supposed to give him the right to make me bleed?”
Something about me.
Something about my eyes, Rubiy said. Siebeling had said it too, trying to tell me what I didn’t want to hear. . . .
“Jule.”
I took a deep breath. “What did he mean about my eyes?”

“Who?”
She reached mentally, trying to follow the change of my thoughts.

“Rubiy.
And Siebeling.
Both of them said it, about my eyes. My eyes are green. But ‘all psions have green eyes,’” remembering Rubiy’s, like sea ice. “Don’t they?”

She looked up at me, and hers were gray, with round, normal pupils; but I wouldn’t let my gaze break. She said, “Oh.” Her fingers wove through the fringe on her shawl. “I know
,
there’s that saying. . . . But most of them don’t anymore. Not green as grass, not like yours.”

“It’s been a long time; most of them are hazel, green diluted with other colors.”

“What about you?”

She smiled; the flash of metal was in it again, gone again.
“A curiosity.
No one in the family dreamed . . . my parents were certain there was no tainting of their bloodline. They wanted to forget the early days, when Centauri Transport . . . But psions don’t always have green eyes,” changing the subject almost angrily. “Not anymore. It’s been a long time.”

“Since what?”

“Since we met the Hydrans.”

My hands tightened on the cushions.

“You know the history-?” she asked, like Siebeling had, when I didn’t answer.

“Not much.” My voice was barely louder than hers. “What’s to know?”

“Well . . . that when humanity got a stardrive and began to expand outward from our home system, they found a humanoid people on Beta Hydrae III, and on several other inhabitable worlds in the same general region of space. They were colony worlds of a stellar union that had begun to pass its peak long before the coming of the humans. At first we were overjoyed to discover another intelligent species, proof that we weren’t alone in the universe-and to find they were a gentle, non-aggressive people; no possible threat to the Human Federation. But they happened to be psions, too. At first that was just another marvel-their societies functioned on totally different dynamics and sources of energy from our own. We learned a lot about them . . . and in the process we destroyed them. But in the beginning there was a period of peaceful contact, intermarriage, and sometimes even children born of it. The children tended to inherit the Hydran psi, and also eyes that were as green as grass.”

“How could they have kids? That’s . . . I mean, Hydrans ain’t even human. No human marries an alien now. Ain’t it illegal or something?” I frowned.

She didn’t see it; she was still looking out at the rain. “Some people still do. Ardan did. It’s not illegal; it’s just not easy. Things have changed over the centuries-attitudes. And the Hydrans have suffered because of it. But the aliens must be ‘human,’ Cat, or there wouldn’t be any saying about green-eyed
psions. . . .
Or else humans are ‘alien.’ There have been some people who say that humans are a world of defective Hydrans, mutant-mute. That our psionic blindness has made us lose our true humanity.”

“Crap,” I said, flexing my hands.

She shrugged a little. “But there are still a lot of hazel-eyed human psions; even if green-eyed ones like you are very rare.”

“Because nobody in their right mind would want a half-breed freak for a son.”

I felt her look at me. She always knows
,
she can’t help it-why didn’t she understand? I looked back at her, with my green stranger’s eyes. And her mind flooded with shame and grief, reflected pain, confusion, apology. (Sorry, sorry, sorry!) . . . Tears were starting. “Please don’t feel like that!”

I tightened my mind, wove it together-to keep from feeling her, to stop her from feeling me.

She drew a long, shaky breath, pressing her mouth with her hand. “You didn’t know that you had Hydran blood? I thought. . . . How could you not know?” The words wavered. “Didn’t anyone ever-?”

I shook my head and said bitterly, “Just lucky, I guess.” But the bits and pieces were fitting together in my memory: the joke, the insult, the senseless beating-the truth that I wouldn’t let myself understand. I’d never figured it out. Maybe because I didn’t dare, because I couldn’t carry one more weight, one more stone dragging me down. Maybe that was the real thing I’d spent my life hiding from, in dark corners, endless days alone, drug dreams . . . the thing that all the hunters sensed, that marked me as a victim.

Jule’s eyes held the nowhere look they got when her mind was on things meant only for her. So I sat staring out at the rain, and thought about being a- No. It only figures, with your luck. And maybe it explained my luck, all the way back.
Always bad.
Maybe it even explained Siebeling-a man who’d had a Hydran wife, who had a half-breed son somewhere in the galaxy. A man who had to be ashamed of his perversion, who hated that secret locked in the closet of his past. Because who wouldn’t hate a thing like that?
Or somebody who reminded him of it?
He’d even told me so. And I’d tried to ignore it, again. But this time there was no escape.

The lift chimed again, and I turned, looking toward it. Jule stirred and turned too, her face stiff. The doors opened and Siebeling was standing there. I didn’t have to be anybody’s mind reader to know he was upset about something. He came toward us without a word. Jule’s face brightened and came alive; I caught a pang of bittersweet from her mind that had nothing to do with anything but the sight of him.

But Siebeling was looking at me, and suddenly I knew we had unfinished business.

“Ardan,” Jule said, “he came. Rubiy, the one we’ve been waiting for. He came here; he told us about his-offer. And Cat thinks he’s-“

“Both of you?”

She nodded.
“Both of us.
I-he was-“

“It has to wait, then.” He shook his head.
“Until we discuss something more personal.”
He had something in his hand, and he put it down on the low table between us. It was a clear ball that looked like crystal but wasn’t, with a gold and green insect caught in flight inside it. “This is a nice little toy. Where did you get it?”

And then I knew what I’d done wrong. I’d forgotten about that ball. “It . . . ain’t mine.”

“I believe that.” His voice was sour.

I shook my head. “I mean, I never seen it before.” I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. I never could.

“Then I suppose it was just in your jacket by accident.”

“Look, if you want to call me a thief, then
do
it. That’s what you’re thinking.” I wondered why I’d bothered to get up this morning.

“That’s what I’m saying, then.”

“I didn’t steal it! I-I borrowed it. I just wanted to . . . see how it worked.” I wondered why the truth always sounded more like a lie than a lie did.
Probably because it was only half the truth.
I’d taken it, all right, off the desk the second time he interviewed me.

I’d picked it up for spite, almost without thinking, never meaning to keep it. But I never gave it back. . . . I couldn’t. When you held it in your hands, it made pictures, things like I’d never seen-images of some other world. When you were tired of one it made another, and if you wanted one again it came back. I’d never seen anything like it. I just couldn’t give it up. So I kept it. I knew I’d be in trouble if anyone found out, so I’d just blocked it out of my mind.
The perfect crime.
I felt my face getting red.

He put his hand on the ball, gently, and there was a new image inside it. “Why?” His voice strained.

“What?”

“Why did you take it?” That wasn’t what he’d meant. His mind was a tangle of burning thoughts I couldn’t read, most of them not about me. . . . And suddenly I understood: that it was an alien thing, a Hydran thing.
A thing that had belonged to his half-breed son.
And I’d taken it. You gork, you stupid damn fool! I grimaced.

“Why did you take it?”

“I . . . I . . .” How could I tell him how warm it felt in my hands; how could I tell him about the pictures? How was I supposed to tell him something I didn’t understand myself? “It . . . was pretty; I liked it.”

“You liked it.”

“Yeah, you-
“ I
bit my tongue, trying to keep from saying the rest of it.
“All right.
I took it, and I kept it. I knew it was wrong. I’m sorry. I won’t take
nothing
again, I swear.
All right?”
It had to be all right. I was even admitting I was wrong. What else could he want?

He whispered a name-an alien’s name.
His wife’s name.
And his wife was dead. Pain filled the memory. He was looking down at the ball, and I don’t think he knew he’d said anything out loud. I was sure he hadn’t meant for me to hear it. He glanced up at me again. “It shouldn’t respond for you, you couldn’t even understand. . . .”
Like he was blaming me for something.

But he was going to take the ball. I reached out, my fingers touched it. The picture changed.

He grabbed my wrist. “Keep your hands off that, you cheap gutter thief! Maybe you think a fast apology is all you need to save you every time you ‘like’ something. Well, not with me. If that’s the best behavior you can manage, then maybe you’re not good enough to go on working here.” (And you won’t ever be-)

“You got no right to think that.” I jerked free. “I’m as good as you are. And I’m sick of getting treated like I ain’t!”

He picked up the ball. “Then consider yourself dismissed. Get
out,
I don’t want to see you again.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“But . . .” Somehow I stood up, numb all over. “I guess we both know why you’re doin’ this, don’t we?” He didn’t answer. I looked back at Jule. Her face was pale and her eyes were wet; she was staring down at her hands with the bitten-off nails, and they were twitching.
“Jule.”
I said it quietly; she didn’t look up. “It’s gonna be all right. You’ll see.” I put my hand out over hers, the only time I’d ever really touched her. Her fingers curled around mine in a kind of spasm; she clung to my hand for a second. I knew her tears weren’t about anything going on between any of us here. “Look, I’m going now. I’ll . . . see you later, huh?” She didn’t answer me. I didn’t figure she would. When I straightened up again, Siebeling moved between us, forcing me to back off. He leaned over, murmuring something to her. I went to the waiting lift and took it down.

The lift stopped at the usual floor, because I’d said the number without thinking. I almost stepped out, almost went back to my room; thinking there was nothing else I could do except go there and wait.

But I stood looking down the empty hallway, looking at another world: one I didn’t belong to anymore. Siebeling had cut me loose, and soon enough Corporate Security would come for me and make it official. . . . I’d known all along this was too good to last, like any other dream. My fists tightened, the numbness that had me by the throat suddenly let me go. It was over, and I’d been screwed. I owed nothing to
nobody
. And I was damned if I was going to stay here like a loser and make it easy for them to take me back. The doors slipped shut again, and I went on down.

I got out at the main reception lobby. Its three-story vault was draped with wall hangings that turned every sound into a whisper. I tried to walk like I had a right to be there; but even if I didn’t, no one seemed to care. I moved through the changing dance of bodies, trying to believe I looked as normal as everyone else seemed to think I did, until I reached the building entrance. There were no guards waiting, not even a solid door to fill the arching space. A soft tingling, a breath of forced air, and I was through-standing free in the open in the wide fountain square that I’d seen from high above.