by Ellen Datlow
So that was mainly why I stayed, you know. I wanted to check that out, see this empath and Caverty, get a feel for how they worked and why Caverty wanted to work that way. But I think I must have had it in the back of my mind that I was going to leave after that, unless Caverty could disentangle himself from his empath and his Harmony and the rest of the Entourage. So I could work him properly.
Disentangle? Did I really say that?
I don’t know. I can’t read it any more.
Harmony gave me the house tour. Done-over mansion, the usual things overdone as well as done over. Ten thousand rooms, not counting bedrooms. Ballrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, room rooms, an art gallery, a theatre where Caverty showed his holos if he felt like it. That last wasn’t the way Harmony put it but that was the general idea, or so I gathered from her Emotional Index.
Reading the Emotional Index of someone who is trying like hell to give you the best impression can be amusing or annoying, depending on your mood. Occasionally I found myself feeling one way or the other about it but mostly I felt uneasy. She’d fallen into some kind of PR ramadoola that she was running on me. Silliness; you don’t give a pathosfinder PR because she finds out what the truth is right away. But Harmony was straining to make me happy or get some kind of approval from me. Maybe because she thought then I’d do a better job with her boss?
No, that wasn’t it. She was trying to sell me something.
Or convert me.
Oh, yes. Once I saw it, there was no way not to see it. But never mind. Sooner or later, I’d get to Caverty and I wouldn’t have to bother with Harmony or Priscilla the Party Baby or anyone else in the Entourage.
“I need to see Caverty as soon as possible,” I told Harmony as she led me down yet another upstairs hall toward yet another room she thought she had to show me. “He is my client, I have to let him know I’ve arrived.” Harmony turned to look at me with mild surprise. “But—were you thinking of starting work today?”
“If Caverty wanted to start in five minutes, I’d do my best to be ready.” “He won’t want to start today, I’m positive. And I’m sure someone must have told him you’re here."The smile turned a little hard. “Perhaps Priscilla. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to get comfortable, settle in a little, get to know the place? Not to mention all of us. Caverty’s group. I know he’d like you to feel like you’re a part of things. I mean, if you’re going to be here awhile—” “I don’t actually know how long I’ll be here. I won’t have any idea until Caverty and I begin working together, and even then it’ll be hard to say. Pathosfinding isn’t a simple business. And that doesn’t even come into it. Some extremely complicated jobs have taken less than a day to complete while others that were more straightforward took weeks.” I resisted the temptation to look apologetic; not hard, really, because they don’t call me Deadpan Allie for nothing, but her proselytizing was working at me, trying to find a way in, at least to my politeness sympathies. “I really must speak to Caverty, whether we begin working today or two weeks from now. He’s my client.”
Harmony spread her hands and then clasped them together with a little sigh. Her nails were also painted brown, I noticed. That shouldn’t have seemed bizarre. “Well. If you must, you must. Could I at least phone him and tell him we’re coming? Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
She stepped into a room which seemed to be a souvenir gallery of some kind—still holos alongside flat pictures promoting one or other of Caverty’s works, things that might have been awards, props, or just items he (or someone) had wanted to keep for sentimental reasons. Not a junk room; it was all neat and very organized. I glanced around while Harmony used a talk-only phone on a seven-tiered ceramic table. She didn’t say much and she didn’t say it to Caverty, I was pretty sure. The Entourage has a completely different way of talking to the Man (or Woman) than they do to each other, and for each other, they had their own pecking order that was never quite congruent with the Man’s idea of who was over whom. Harmony was talking to an equal, without a doubt and, without a doubt, that wasn’t the empath.
“He says come right up,” Harmony said, replacing the phone. “Caverty lives at the top of the house; starting on this floor, there are elevators so we don’t have to climb a million stairs.” The smile was forced now, though I wouldn’t have been able to tell if I hadn’t known how to read an Emotional Index. She really hadn’t wanted to take me to Caverty today at all and I couldn’t figure that out. She’d chosen me (according to her, anyway); her own comfort was contingent on my helping the Man but she was reluctant to let me near him. Not completely reluctant—-just for today. Tomorrow. Manana, no problem. Entourages could be funny things. I had a passing thought that Caverty had better turn out to be worth it after the obstacle course I was having to run to get to him.
Well, of course, he had the whole top floor of the house, though the main room where he did most of his living and working was a big studio at the rear of the building, where he could look out a fan-shaped, floor-to-ceiling window at cultivated rolling country. He was sitting at the window when Harmony led me in—I was never going to walk with Harmony, I saw, she was always going to lead—off to the left side, looking away from the sunset, which was visible through another much smaller window behind him. A woman was sitting at his feet, one hand resting casually on his ankle. I could just barely hear their voices in quiet conversation. Harmony looked around, saw no one else and nearly panicked.
“I talked to Langtree, he told me to come up,” she said, ostensibly to me but actually so Caverty would hear and know that she hadn’t just taken it upon herself to barge in. Whatever happened to Caverty says come right up, I wondered.
“It’s all right, Harmony,” Caverty called out. There was a slight echo off the mostly empty walls. “I sent Langtree out.”
“Oh,” she breathed, pretending to fan herself relievedly with one brown-tipped hand, “that’s good, I’m glad I wasn’t interrupting anything important—”
“You weren’t,” Caverty said good-naturedly. He had one of those voices that would sound good-natured all the time, even when it was chewing someone out. “You’re okay, Harmony, thanks for everything. You can go now, too, take a break, get some rest. Have a drink, have kinky sex, whatever you want.”
Harmony gave one of those full-bodied ha-ha-ha laughs and sort of backed out of the room, looking from me to Caverty and the woman on the floor and back again.
“The pathosfinder,” Caverty said to me.
“The pathosfinder. Yes.” Hooked around. The holo equipment was in an untidy pile in the righthand corner nearest the door. Except for one of the cameras and a couple of colored lights, it all looked as though it hadn’t been touched for a long time, not even to be cleaned. For me, that will always be what a creative block really looks like, in the mind or in the world: a pile of mostly unused equipment, gathering dust.
Caverty didn’t get up. “Come closer,” he said. “Please.”
I walked across the room slowly enough to have time to look at both of them. Caverty was a solidly built man, more good-looking than he really needed to be. Sculpture, of course; these days everyone’s from Mt. Olympus, with bone structure to die for (which, of course, you have to pay for and only the filthoid rich can pay for custom designs like the one Caverty had). But on Caverty, there was a sense of overkill about his attractiveness, too many nice things crammed into one place.
The same could not be said about the woman sitting on the floor. There was a naturalness about her that was also very expensive, except she hadn’t bought her looks. She stopped short of being delicate—-fine was the way that old bastard NN would have put it. Aquamarine eyes; the facets in the pupils glittered like tears. Thick, dark straight hair cut ragamuffin-style. Thin as a ballet dancer but without any sense of a dancer’s litheness. I realized belatedly that she had stolen my attention away from Caverty completely.
Caverty looked up at me with the start of a smile. “My empath, Madeleine.” He pr
onounced it Mad-a-LAYNE. “We were just enjoying some quiet moments at the end of the day. No matter what I’m doing I try to take time to enjoy those few moments before the daylight fades.” He shifted position slightly, adjusting his caftan. It was gray, very thick and heavily textured, mimicking a handweave. “Although we never watch the sunset. I don’t believe in such things of course but Harmony says that west is definitely not my direction. I’m northeast. Which is why this house is perfect for me. According to the Compass, I mean, if you believe such things. I don’t imagine pathosfinders put any more stock in them than holo artists.” He looked at Madeleine. “Or empaths?”
She gave a short, breathy laugh. “We’ve known each other far too long for you to have to ask that.”
“How long is that?” I asked conversationally.
They had to look at each other before they could answer me. “Fifteen years,” Caverty said, while Madeleine nodded. “That is, we’ve known each other for fifteen years; we’ve been working together for eight. Of course, just knowing Madeleine affected me deeply, even before we began working together. Affected my work. So perhaps we have been working together the whole time we’ve known each other. She’s been working on me, anyway.” He chuckled, looking at his empath fondly while she sat under his praise smiling demurely at her knees.
“Before that, how often did you work with a pathosfinder?” I asked.
They both looked up at me with mild surprise. “Maybe once, twice a year,” Caverty said. “It isn’t the sort of thing you can do all the time. Why?”
“I was just wondering. For the sake of the job. It can help before we start if I know a little about your last mindplay experience.”
“Bless me, Allie, for I have sinned. It has been eight years since my last mindplay experience. With a pathosfinder. I can barely remember it now, it seems.”
Madeleine gave him a soft pat on the leg.
“Could I ask why you feel the need to work with one now after all these years?”
Caverty took a deep breath. “I need something different. My work needs something different. Have you seen any of my holos?”
“I’ve seen all of them, including your last release, Dinners Between Dinners.”
“Retitled Food Fight by the critics,” he said with a hint of hurt feelings. “Not that there wasn’t something to what some of them said. There is no easy way to look at yourself and see that you’re getting stale. Especially when you were considered an innovator early in your career. You have no idea how excruciating it is to have to give up the position of Promising Young Turk because all your Promising Young Turk stuff has become an old story. People begin to recognize the devices you fall back on as, well, the devices you fall back on. I thought it was time to explore some different things.”
“And what about you?” I said to the empath.
She sat up slightly, blinking. “What do you mean?”
“What will you be doing?”
“When?”
“While Caverty’s exploring these different things?”
“Why, what I always do. I’ll be empathizing.” Her tiny smile grew even tinier. “Won’t I?” She looked to Caverty.
He leaned over to say something to her, paused, and frowned up at me. “Won’t she?”
Time for the tightrope walk fifty yards above the glass net. “There are, I’m sure, pathosfinders who will work with a tandem of any kind. And there are pathosfinders who work with empaths—”
“Is there something wrong with empaths?” she asked. Not a bit defensive, either; her Emotional Index was devoid of any hostility. She just wanted to know. I felt myself relax a little.
“Well, when you’re mindplaying, the system facilitating the contact between minds imposes a certain amount of order on the encounter—there’s a medium for the minds to interact within, strict boundary conditions that keep separate entities truly separate so that there isn’t any confusion as to whose thoughts are whose, and a certain amount of protocol that reinforces the personal sense of security.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes.” I waited and she waited with me. “I mean, that’s it. That’s what it is.” She looked at me doubtfully. “That’s what’s wrong with empaths?” Caverty’s posture changed very subtly to a protective position.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t actually mean there was anything wrong with empaths. What I mean is—well, that’s why I don’t work with empaths. I thought the agency made that clear.”
Caverty rubbed his chin with two fingers. “They didn’t.”
“I’m surprised. My agency has always been careful to spell out exactly what the mindplayers do. And don’t do.”
“Well, that’s all right anyway,” Caverty said, warmth flowing into his voice from somewhere deep inside. “You don’t have to work with an empath. I work with an empath. That will do.”
“Will it do for you not to work with an empath while you’re working with me?”
Caverty’s smile shrank somewhat. “You mean while we’re hooked in together or the whole time you’re here?”
I didn’t look at Madeleine. “The whole time I’m here.”
“Oh …” He slumped back in his chair and stared intently at the toes of his slippers. Doeskin slippers, possibly synthetic but then again, perhaps not. This was the home of the filthoid rich, after all. “I—I’m not sure.”
Madeleine reached out to put a hand on his knee and then changed her mind, showing me that she was letting him make his own decision this time.
“I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that,” he said. “Madeleine and I—we’ve been together for so long—not working with Madeleine is—it would be like not working with air.”
“Oh, Caverty,” Madeleine said. “You have to do what is best for your work.”
I wasn’t sure I could take the sudden emotional charge pressurizing the room. All at once, there seemed to be a heaviness on my solar plexus, the way you feel when you barge in on some kind of intimate scene, or perhaps when it barges in on you. But they don’t call me Deadpan Allie for nothing. (For fun, maybe, hey, NN? Depends on your idea of fun.) I waited it out; Caverty and the empath rode it out. Without moving, either.
Presently, she said, “You should try it, Caverty. You have to try it, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your work. We both know you’ve gotten stale—”
“Don’t say that too loud, the critics might have the place bugged.”They smiled sadly at each other in lieu of laughing.
“Try it,” she said. “It’ll be … different. You need something different. Something besides me.”
Did she think I was completely stupid? Or just stupid enough not to know how to read an Emotional Index? Hers said she believed he needed nothing of the sort, that she would continue to be the one and only thing he needed, work or no work.
But then, she was an empath. Maybe it wasn’t her Emotional Index I was reading but his.
I resisted the urge to blink several times and maintained as much neutrality as I could, which, under the circumstances, wasn’t really very much. Just by being there I was pitting myself against her, forcing a choice between us.
She got up suddenly. “Try it now. Just here, just the two of you.”
He reached out for her, about to protest.
“No. I insist. This is your career, Caverty. It’s all right, I’m not going anywhere except out of the room. You know I’ll always be here for you.” She gave me a quick, level, professional-to-professional smile as she passed me on her way out. Caverty looked after her with dismay, fear, and guilt fighting it out for dominance on his handsome face. He stared at the door for a long time after she shut it. Then finally his attention came over to me.
“And now what?” he asked, spreading his hands. They were shaking a little.
“Now not so much. I thought we might talk. Get acquainted. I don’t like to go cold into contact with someone’s mind and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to, either.”
“Oh, no, certainly not.” He shi
fted position in the chair, trying to get comfortable. It was a very comfortable chair, not one of those living contour things that adjusts itself to your every little move, just a very receptive inanimate, but it was impossible for him now that Madeleine was out of the room. “What, ah, do you need to know? Oh, dinner’s coming up. We don’t want to miss dinner. The meals around here are prima.”
The sun had gone down and, as it had grown progressively darker outside, the lights had come up in perfect equilibrium with the fading sunlight so that you almost didn’t notice the change.
“We won’t miss any meals. Pathosfinding doesn’t require that anyone starve for their art.” I wanted to go over to him but I had no intention of sitting at his feet. I looked around for another chair, spotted one near the pile of equipment and dragged it over so I could sit across from him.
“That’s good,” he said, stealing a glance at the door again. “I doubt that I could, any more. I’ve grown too used to eating regularly and well.” Pause, and then a rueful smile. “That being why I called you in.”
“At this point, you wouldn’t starve if you never worked up another holo. It’s a different kind of need now.”
He squinted at me with thoughtful surprise. “You know.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve worked with many, many artists of many different kinds.” And empaths aren’t the only ones who know how other people feel, I added to myself. “You can do lots of things to keep from starving, but only one thing to produce your art.”
“Absolute. Just absolute.” He nodded, feeling comfortable for all of three seconds. “That’s the truth.” He put his hand on his stomach. “Was that me? Did you hear that? My stomach just roared like a wild animal. I think I can smell dinner from here.”
Let him go, said some small part of my mind. Probably the last shred of my common sense. Let him go, let him cling to his empath and later you can hook in with him and fail and go home none the worse for wear.
“I need to be able to look at any holos you have available for viewing around here.”