Psion (3 page)

And then we were up above the gardens, tier after tier of them; moving through the honest-to-God light of day. Towers, shining and flowing, speared the bright blue air on every side, reflecting the sky until it seemed to flow into them and through them. . . . I shut my eyes, giddy and tingling. I looked out again after a minute, at the endless height of the sky and Quarro shining down below me like . . . like . . . Knowing there had to be words somewhere for what I saw, but not how to find them.

The Corpse sat silently with his back against the barrier between us. The city lay like a long slender hand between the bay and the sea, jeweled fingers shining into the haze. Mother Earth-I really live here? I felt the binders cutting into my wrists.

But then we were dropping down through the air. We settled on a ledge where a couple of aircabs already sat, halfway down the side of a silvered building wall. There was an entrance waiting for us, one that didn’t look like it got much use.

It was some kind of a
hospital,
I knew it as soon as we stepped inside. A hospital was a hospital, no matter how much they spent to make it look like something else. I stopped dead. “What is this? What do they want with me?”

“It’s Sakaffe Research Institute,” the Corpse said. “I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn. C’mon, you asked for it.” He was between me and the
door,
there was no way I could leave, so I went on in.

He asked a passing tech for directions. She was carrying a plastic bag with what looked like someone’s liver inside it, floating in purple sauce. It didn’t make me feel better. She nodded over her shoulder, and we walked on down the silent hallway to a waiting room. The far wall was a sheet of tinted glass; light poured through it in a blinding flood that made me squint.

“Over there.” The Corpse pointed, and then I saw the others, sitting along a cushioned seat below the wall of glass. He reached out and demagnetized the binders on my wrists; they dropped into his hands. He gave me a shove toward the window and told me, “Siddown, shuddup, and don’t pull any stunts.” Then he went back out into the hall. I knew he’d be waiting for me there in case I did.

There were half a dozen people sitting under the window already. I felt them giving me the eye as I limped toward them across the thick, sunlit carpet. I knew I was something to stare at-smeared with blood and dirt and dye; wearing a paper coat the Corpses had given me to cover most of the bruises, and over my ankle brace, pants so old they were ready for a museum. I wondered why we were all here, and what I’d really got myself into. I wished I had a camph to chew on to steady my nerves.

I stopped in front of the bench and looked for a place to sit down. The group of them had spread out on it like they were staking territory, until there was no room left. There were two women and four men. All the men looked
poor,
a couple of them looked tough. One of the tough ones had a stretched earlobe with no combine’s tag in it-a busted spacer. One of the women looked rich, the other one just looked afraid. Nobody moved. They just stared, at me and through me, or at their feet. Finally the spacer said, “Up there.”

So I looked where he was looking. Past the end of the bench, in the wall on my right, there was a closed door with a blue-hazed window.
“The front of the line?”

“Pretty smart, Cityboy.”
He thought he was smarter. “One look at you, they won’t be so choosy about the rest of us.” He laughed and then they all did; strained, nervous laughter.

I wasn’t laughing. “You want to eat that?” I moved toward him.

“Listen, you,
don’t
make trouble,” one of the women-the rich one-said. She was dressed like all the ones who came to Oldcity for laughs. Her round face was patterned with tiny red and gold jewels, matching the color of her hair.

“Butt out. This ain’t your affair.” I glared at her.

But her eyes said that it was. And then I saw that so did everyone else’s; they were all looking at me now. Nobody moved.

“Any time, gutter rat.” The spacer grinned. “That Corpse out in the hall would just love to see you try it.”

I let my hands drop and went to the head of the line. The frightened woman moved in from the end of the bench, either to let me sit down or because she was afraid I’d touch her. I stuck my leg out into the warm sunlight and smoothed the ankle brace, pulled my paper coat tighter to my chest. Then I twisted to look out the window, letting my eyes follow the flow of clouds and towers, pretending I was alone. I looked down, and down, and thought about falling.

The door to the next room opened and someone came out. His face was grim and disappointed; he looked like a gambler who’d lost his Last Chance. And everyone was looking at me; and so was the man standing in the doorway. “All right, who’s next?”

Me. I was next. I looked down at the rip in the knee of my pants, and couldn’t make myself move.

But then the woman sitting next to me stood up. “I’ll go,” she said. She looked at me for a minute as if she knew, before she looked at the man in the doorway. “I’m next.” I stared at her. She was holding something and she dropped it into my hands. It was a piece of soft cloth, a scarf.

I wanted to say, “What’s it to you?” but she was already gone. I looked back at the rest of
them,
half heard the rich bitch say something snide. I frowned at her, and she said, “What are you staring at?”

I looked back out the window, with the face of the frightened woman still caught inside my eyes. I tried to stop seeing it, wanting to forget about her; but I couldn’t. She was older than I’d figured, somewhere in her twenties in standard years. Her hair fell almost to her hips, as black as midnight in an Oldcity alley. Her clothes were dark and peculiar, layers of shirt and shawl wrapping her in mourning shrouds. She was tall, and too thin, and tired. But her eyes: cloud-gray, up-slanting . . . and when she’d looked at me, empty. She’d gone ahead of me to help me, but it hadn’t been personal. It was only a kind of reflex action, like pulling away from a flame; something you did to stop your own pain. I felt strange when I realized that; invisible. I didn’t know what to think.

So I didn’t think about it for long. I didn’t need favors from some burned-out fem anyhow. I looked down at the scarf, as green and gentle as moss bunched between my hands. I let it slide between my fingers, feeling the clean softness of it, breathing in a spicy fragrance like incense. Then I spat on it, and began to wipe off my face.

She was in the other room for a long time. I wondered whether she read minds, if that was why we were here. If that was how she’d known. And I wondered whether knowing what everyone thought was what had made her eyes so empty. The thought of having to live like her, like a freak that everybody hated, made my skin crawl. Then I wondered why the Corpses even thought that I could do it. Because I couldn’t; I wasn’t some kind of freak. Someone had come and tested me at the detention center, and afterward the Corpses told me I was a psion, I could read minds. I told them they were full of it. They just looked at each other, disgusted, and said, “You’re a lucky freak, Cityboy.” After that they put me on a truthtester and asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer. And the next thing I knew they were asking me if I wanted to get out of there.

But they were still crazy-I’d never read a mind in my life. That meant I didn’t have a chance, if mind reading was what they wanted from me here. . . . I was almost
glad,
thinking about that woman with her dead eyes, every day of her life spent knowing how much everyone hated her because she knew. . . . But then I remembered I sure as hell wasn’t glad about how I was going to end up if they didn’t choose me.

“Next.”

The door was open but the mind reader didn’t come back, and the red-haired woman nodded as if she’d known. I got up, stuffing the scarf into my pocket. My legs still felt like they were paralyzed, but somehow I made it to the doorway.

The man who’d been standing there before was already sitting down, behind a desk terminal. Daylight poured over it from the window wall. The
desk, the chairs, the tables in the room, were
made of real wood. I wanted to touch something, but I didn’t. I wished again that I had a pack of camphs on me. There was a genuine sculpture painting on the wall behind him, not a cheap holostill; I’d been around enough stolen goods to know quality when I saw it. I stared at the thick raised wood grain on the curve of his desk and took a deep breath, before I looked up at him.

He was about thirty-five, maybe a little older. His face had a pinched look, like the face of someone who’d been sick a long time; but something about his expression told me he was no easy mark. His hair was cut short and it was already graying. He hadn’t tried to hide that. The yellow collarless summer shirt he was wearing was good
stuff,
imported from off-world-that must have docked him plenty. But he didn’t have on a drape or even jewelry, except two plain rings on his left hand, third and fourth fingers: a widower? He wasn’t smiling. I tried my best handout smile on him. His eyes were hazel-green and brown. They were staring at my face and down at my clothes, back at my face again. I figured this must be the one the Corpses in Oldcity had told me was “Dr. Siebeling,” the one they were sending me to see. My leg hurt. I wanted to sit down too, but the way he looked at my clothes kept me on my feet.

“Rather young, aren’t you?” That wasn’t all he thought was wrong with me. His hands cupped a glass ball with a hazy image inside it. He stroked it with a kind of absentminded need, like it was helping him stay calm.

I shook my head. My own hands tightened. Everyone thought I was younger than I was-softer, stupider,
easier
to use or push around. It was like I’d been born a victim, somehow; like they could smell it. I had a lot of scars on me from proving they were wrong.

He said, “Prisoner nine-double-oh-five-seven.” I nodded, even though it didn’t mean anything. He had what must have been the report from Corporate Security on the terminal, and he stared at it for a while before he looked up again. “This says you’ve got a record of petty thievery, and that now you’re charged with assault and battery against three recruiters for Contract Labor. That you attacked one man with a knife-“

“Is that what he said?
That croach.
I didn’t need a knife.” He looked up at me with eyes like stones. “It was a bottle.”

“Attacked one man with a knife, struck another, and kicked a pile of boxes down on a third. You ran away, and were arrested by Corporate Security after you broke your ankle in a fall. You were out on drugs at the time?” He sounded like he didn’t believe it.

I didn’t say anything.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I didn’t want to be shipped off to some sewer world where they can’t get nobody sane to go, and rot there for half my lousy life. Why the hell do you think? The stinking Crows . . .”

He looked bored. “There was kadge in your bloodstream when you were picked up. That was two days ago, and you’re not climbing the walls-you’re not addicted?”

I shook my head. “I can’t afford it.”

“None of them can afford it, but most of them aren’t that lucky. In fact, I’ve never heard of anyone who could take it or leave it.”

Neither had I, when I thought about it, but I only said, “You have now.”

He glanced down at the report again. “This says you’re also no mind reader. You tested wide-spectrum on telepathy but entirely dysfunctional. I’ve never heard of that before, either. You must have given the techs a real challenge: you show a ten-plus resistance to probe. I show an eight; that’s high. You have control like that and you’ve never used it?”

I was remembering the test: the veil of tingling mesh they’d fastened over my face back at the Corporate Security station, how I’d felt when my mind began to unravel. . . .

“Well? I asked you a question, Cityboy. I expect you to answer it.”

“I got a name, sucker! It’s
Cat.
” I was starting to believe in hate at first sight.

His hands tightened on the desk edge; I knew I’d put my foot in my mouth. “Don’t you get smart with
me.
I’m sick and tired of you and all the rest. Why the hell can’t they send me something besides criminals and addicts?”

“Okay, okay.
I didn’t mean nothin’ by, it.”
I raised my hands. I hoped I looked as sorry as I felt-sorry for me. The last thing I wanted was to give him a reason to send me back out that door, back to the Corpse with the binders waiting in the hall. I tried to make my answer come out smooth and soft. “No. I didn’t know I was a mind reader till the Corpses told me so. I never felt-never even f-f-
“ Black
lightning flickering at the core of my mind, someone screaming.

Siebeling stared at me with a peculiar expression on his face. All his anger was gone. “What is it?”

I shook my head, rubbed my eyes, feeling cold and confused. “Nothing. . . . No. I don’t want to be a mind reader; who would?” The words spilled out before I could stop them. “All the psions I ever seen were crazy. They don’t call ‘em freaks for nothin’.” I grimaced.

“How much do you know about psionics?” His face was empty again. He pushed the glass ball away from him on the desktop.

“Nothing.
What do I care about a bunch of freaks?”

“Psionics research”-he let it sink in-“is what you volunteered to participate in.”