Psion (17 page)

“You look dead, sitting there with your eyes unfocused.”

“What do you want me to do about it? I’m thinking.” I looked over at Joraleman. His eyes were shut. He wasn’t asleep; he was praying. He wanted to be out of this so much that it was almost a physical pain, merging into the pain of his broken body.

“Then think of how to get us out of here, smartass.” Mikah got up and started to cough. His own fear crackled like static.

I blocked them out of my mind. I’d done it; for a second I’d found someone, something. I loosened my mind, let it reach out again; this time knowing where to start, spinning out an invisible thread, casting into the dark waters . . . and then suddenly contact, feeling, sound, vision, everything: blinding, alien sensory feedback, twisting and warping my mind’s sight like crazy mirrors, roaring and ringing, shocking every nerve ending in my body.

I broke contact. I sat with my eyes shut tight, more grateful right then for the emptiness in my mind than I’d ever been for anything; not even wanting to face the real world. But I’d done it. And knowing that I had, that I could, I had to go back again. . . .

This time it was almost easy; I knew the way through the dark. But I took it slowly, keeping control, making the sudden explosion of images and impressions filter through blocks and byways to reach my mind’s eye. And I understood this time that I hadn’t contacted just one of the aliens. Somehow I’d contacted them all, more minds than I could ever comprehend, all at once. I was looking through hundreds of eyes at once, breaking in on a hundred different lives, plugged into the circuits of enough energy to burn out all my senses if I lost control again. I could barely touch the wild electricity of living a hundred lives at once. My own thoughts began to tangle helplessly. I started to struggle, to pull my mind free. . . . And then suddenly I knew that they knew about me.

I broke contact and tried to disappear. But they followed me back across the broken connections, and my defenses fell apart until nothing lay in their way. I was drowning in image-

I was back in the stone-walled room; Mikah and Joraleman were standing over me. My face hurt, and after a minute I knew someone had slapped me.

“He just went crazy. Dumb twist sits there staring like he’s seeing things and says he’s ‘thinking,’ then he starts-“

Joraleman said, “What’s the matter with you, kid? Can you hear me?”

I nodded.
“Yeah.
I made contact-with the Spooks.”

“What did I tell you? He’s crazy,” Mikah said.

“I ain’t crazy! I’m a telepath. I got into their minds, and they found out.”

“Is that the truth, bondie? You can read minds? Did you find out anything?”

“Yeah, it’s the truth. But there was too much, it all ran together.” I shook my head. “I’m still trying to get it. . . .” I looked up and away from him.

Two of them were standing there in the room with us. Spooks: a woman with hair like a cloud, whose moon-white skin was netted with age lines; and a man who looked almost human, I thought-I wanted to laugh but I didn’t. They wore heavy clothes, like our own but rougher-looking. I felt them searching us with their mind. I tried to deaden my own mind, not even thinking. . . .

“It’s him. He’s the one you want!” Mikah pointed at me.

The aliens were startled; I could feel their surprise. They moved toward us. I got up and backed away from Joraleman and Mikah, toward the far end of the room. The old woman stayed where she was, watching them; the man followed me. I looked back at the others and said, “Do something,” but they just stood gaping like none of it was real.

The man stopped in front of me, and I couldn’t look away from his eyes. They were green, all green like a cat’s. And when they met mine, the world stopped. Suddenly I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think; my mind was paralyzed like my body. There was only the wall, behind me, holding me up-the wall, the only thing that wasn’t a part of an anger that didn’t belong to me, a thousand bright fluttering rags of image choking my mind . . . a sudden knife of focused thought sinking home behind my eyes, searching for my soul-

(Wait, stop, what do you want?) I felt my memories separating and coming loose, my mind being torn open. He was searching for the answers to a question I didn’t even know; and I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t reach him-I couldn’t even remember how. I couldn’t remember my own name . . . I was disappearing, disintegrating,
feeling
my mind flowing out of me layer after layer. . . .

Until he tore away the last of my defenses, so deep in my mind that I hadn’t even known it was there. And the secret walled up behind it burst out: a nightmare of blood and screaming and agony. His own mind reeled back from it. Just for a second he lost control, giving me time to fuse the defenses he’d torn loose and choke off the horror before my mind had to put a name to it. And then I held him away; I let my own rage against what he was doing feed, and focused a thought from somewhere, (C-A-T spells Cat.) I built on it, strand on strand, to thicken a shield and force him out: He didn’t have the
right,
nobody had the right to do this to me. . . . I felt surprise, but it wasn’t my surprise. He shook my mind and I slipped, but (I’m Cat. . .
Cat.
. . and I won’t . . .)

And then he twisted my mind back on itself and made me see what I was facing: see that all their strength held me-not just his mind, but his mind multiplied a hundred times over. I’d trespassed against them all. They were all there inside his mind, reaching through his eyes, holding me . . . his eyes burning my mind like emeralds burning, green fire, green ice, green as grass-green as mine.
(No!
Don’t hurt me, I’m like you! Look at my eyes, look at my eyes, they’re green!)

I stopped disappearing. One frozen moment went on and on, and then the scattered puzzle pieces of my memory came spinning back together, making me gasp, and I was whole again.
But before I could do anything else, he-they-reached back through my eyes.
I became a link forged into a chain, while they opened up my thoughts again, all of them together reaching into my head, shattering the walls that I’d built for my fears to hide behind-my shields, my armor, my safety, my sanity. Making me stand naked in the circle of their minds with no protection; making me feel every instant of their own lives. My mind was burning out, but I couldn’t make a sound, even inside my head; couldn’t do anything but help them. . . .

And then, just when I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer, all of it was gone. I was alone again: the deep and total bond was broken, and instead there were quiet messages forming on the surface of my mind-the only kind of contact I’d ever known before. But this time it wasn’t in a way I’d ever known it. One voice was made up of all voices, impressions formed instead of words. (And it was true . . . they knew my eyes, they had seen through them now; it was true,) with feeling shifts inside it I didn’t understand. (They found a mirror in my
mind,
saw their own eyes trapped in an alien face. I was the one who had been twice-promised, whose coming would begin the righting of all wrongs. . . .)

But I didn’t understand it, I didn’t want to; I only wanted them out of my mind. All I could think was, (God damn you, for what you did to me!), and I threw it at them. (Everybody thinks they can use me like a garbage can. But I’m human, for God’s sake; I got a right to keep some part of me to myself!)

Their mind touched me again, gently, weaving its hundred voices into harmony with mine-healing, fusing, comforting.
Showing me that my shame was meaningless, that with them I had no need for shame.
My shame melted away; my anger went with it, even though I didn’t want it to. And then I realized that all the clumsy barriers were gone that anger and fear had thrown in the way of the Gift I’d been born with. My mind’s vision was as clear as open sky. . . .

(Through ignorance they had trespassed in my-self. Now they tried to make amends. . . . But none of the other desecrators, and none of their blue-skinned slaves, had the gift of true sharing. I was the one who had been promised, but they had not realized that I would walk between worlds; not human, not one of them. They wanted to know why I was different. How had I been made this way?)

I shook my head, because it was all I could do. I thought, (I-I don’t understand. I don’t know. It just happened, I guess. But, we’re not different, really; we’re all the same) remembering what Jule had told me.
(Your people and mine.
That’s why I’m the way I am.) It came so easily, I didn’t know what was happening to me.

I felt the strange surprise fill my mind again, and a flicker of disgust, a wave of disbelief.
(All the same, a unity?
Not the mindless ones, the destroyers, the slave-keepers, the savages. They were less than animals. It was the will of the One that those who mined the sacred stone be stopped . . . made to do no further harm. . . .) The image blurred behind my eyes; not death, but
a nothingness
, like everything I knew disappearing. (I was the one they had been told about. It had been promised long ago that one day
their own
would return from the stars and end their suffering exile. The outsiders would be swallowed up, would disappear, and all wrongs would be righted. It had been promised, and promised again. I was proof that the promise had been kept, and the time had come at last.) The aliens broke contact then, setting my mind free-and leaving it filled.

I stood staring at the alien’s human/inhuman face in front of me, into it, through it. Because I’d been half blind all my
life,
and now I could see. I was in control again, but my mind still absorbed sights and thoughts and feelings that weren’t my own, without even trying. Alien, human, everywhere-I sank into them. My mind dissolved like sea foam, until I could hardly breathe. And then the aliens disappeared, both of them winking out as if they’d never been there. After they were gone, my knees buckled and I slid down the wall.

When I finally felt like getting up again, Joraleman and Mikah were still standing where they’d stood all along. I hit Mikah and knocked him down, even though I knew it hadn’t made any difference that he’d told the aliens who I was.
“Croach.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Joraleman said. He looked dazed. “There-wasn’t anything we could do.”

“Don’t make much difference if you’re sorry now.” I shook out my hand.

Mikah got up and started to come after me, but Joraleman stopped him. “What did they do to you? What happened?”

I tried to tell him what they’d done to me, but it was too personal. I looked away, and only told him what they’d said. When I finished, Mikah said, “You hear that? They’re gonna kill us!
And not him.”
He glared at me. “Why should you get off? You vermy rat, you’re not special. These aren’t civilized
aliens,
you’re not kin to them. You’re just a half-breed freak and a lying son of a bitch.” He started toward me again.

I looked at Joraleman. He didn’t say a thing, trying not to feel the same way Mikah did. I started to back away from them.

Joraleman said, “Stop it!” suddenly. Mikah shut up then, but I kept on backing away. I went to a corner and sat down, watching them. Joraleman put an arm across his ribs and sat down, too. He swallowed more pills from the aid kit. Mikah just stood staring at me, his breath wheezing in his chest.

My mind was still lit up like I was doing dreamtime, although it was fading some since the aliens had gone away. I could still feel everything Joraleman and Mikah were thinking, their fear and anger-more of it than I wanted to. I kept trying to believe it didn’t matter; I didn’t care what happened to them. But . . . “Look, I’ll try to find out what they’re planning for us. Maybe it’ll help.”

Joraleman glanced up, startled, from across the room. He almost smiled.

I closed my eyes and let my mind slide back into alien water, easily now, trying to find the things I had to know, and trying not to drown. These were Hydrans; they had to be, even if I didn’t know what they were doing out here so far from the rest of their kind. They were my own kind-my mind fought it-they knew me, had expected me. A feeling of cold wonder burst inside me. Why? How? And the answer came: (Because they existed to protect the blue stone of this world.)
Telhassium ore.
(They/their ancestors/their god, was/were the One, and the ore was sacred to them, giving life and light to them on this frozen piece of star. The Ancestors, the wellspring of their spirit, had gone from here long ago, but would return; it had been promised. And meanwhile they kept a sacred trust, and preserved the sacred stone.)

They remembered their ancestors’ going; they remembered everything. Their memories pooled age on age-every mind among them was bound to every other, present and past, through hundreds of years; totally, freely, holding nothing back . . . in a joining, the ultimate sharing of mind and soul. They were a whole people who joined and were never separate; each individual was no individual but an outlet for the whole. Every image that any of them, living or dead, had ever shared was woven into the cloth of their group mind. But the wearing of years, hardship, and change had faded and torn the oldest images, until they no longer knew the true meanings, but laid new meanings over the old.

And so I saw the truth, although I didn’t understand all of it then. That the Hydrans had come to the Crab long before the supernova’s shining dust ever showed in Ardattee’s sky. That they’d come here from a stellar empire that had passed its peak and was slipping down; looking for telhassium on a cooling piece of star. They’d set up a Colony of their own here, and then the civilization slipped down even more and the Hydrans on Cinder had lost contact with the rest of their people-with the Ancestors. Cinder grew colder and colder, the humans came; time and hardship shrank the lost Colony until the people no longer understood who they really were, or even why they’d come. But they still understood some things. And so they called the telhassium sacred, and the humans desecrators, and they waited, and waited. . . .