He picked up an innocuous-looking plas ball from among the devices spread before him, twisting it until it opened into two. Sira had taught him how to open his inner sense, to carefully explore nearby minds in order to identify those which might be touched. She’d also taught him a very healthy respect for the trigger-sharp response of a Clan adept of any strength to such a touch. He didn’t plan to try it.
This little beauty, he thought, checking a sequence of fine adjustments before twisting the halves back together, would have to do.
Then he sat, his hands and the device in his lap, ignoring the foul smell coming from the mat as his weight pressed air through the moisture, remembering. He’d shown one of these to her once. Sira.
The rage was there, in front of her memory, a prism of darkness bending her image in his mind into something tormented and confused: sweet longing coupled with anger; the feel of warm, willing lips tasting of his own blood; despair.
Morgan rubbed his free hand over his face, pressing the fingers into his eyelids as though that might clear his inner vision. This wasn’t right. He should be worried about her. He should be frantic to know where Sira was, how she was. Did she need him? Was she safe? Did she think of him?
He dropped the ball on the floor and buried his face in both hands. A broken sound tried to force its way up his throat, but couldn’t.
Sira had made him into the weapon of her vengeance.
At what cost to them both?
Chapter 36
THERE were few things in my life I was absolutely sure of, so few I could tick them off on my fingers.
First on the list? Morgan could never be a murderer.
It was, however, the consensus among Huido’s too-talkative staff, starting with the cook’s confession to me and seeming to have moved translight through everyone else at the Claws & Jaws. I wondered if either Huido or Barac had paid any attention to the number of ears and other listening organs in attendance at their conferences. Probably not. Barac had not yet overcome his Clan arrogance around lesser species, and Huido likely didn’t care.
I could ruthlessly remove the memory from three of the thirty-or-so beings involved. Perhaps I could talk, bribe, or threaten the notion from another twenty. That still left more than enough potential witnesses to embroil Morgan in an investigation if and when the Law discovered the crime. It wasn’t particularly relevant to me whether that Law was Clan, Enforcer, or Station security.
Mind you, they had disposed of the body. The new dish had been such a hit on the Rillian menu the cook waxed positively poetic about the possibility of more. I assured him I thought it quite likely there’d be another Clan corpse available, an assurance easy to give whenever I thought of my sister.
I’d scanned Barac. His motivations were understandable and plain: justice for his brother’s death, a chance for a future. I wasn’t pleased to learn he’d chased after Morgan, but didn’t suspect any darker motive than a charming tendency to interfere.
Rael? I wanted to believe we were truly heart-kin, and that here was a Clan who cared about me. I’d been wrong. And if it was a mistake that harmed Morgan, I promised myself, she would be the first to pay.
“Have you decided on a course of action, Mystic One?” As he waited for an answer, Copelup lifted his container of nicnic juice to his mouth, all six tentacles whipping around to hold it in place. His plumes angled slightly toward me.
I’d told the Skeptic everything. If the Drapsk were to continue helping me, they had to know the risks they might share. Not much had surprised him, or else I wasn’t as good at reading Drapsk expressions as I thought.
It had been the right decision. Copelup had listened, asked only a few questions, then hurried away to give several rapid orders to the Makii, in Comspeak for my benefit. So as we sat in the Makmora’s main galley, a chorus of Drapsk moved through the Station ostensibly looking for trade goods, but actually hunting for answers. They were, I’d noticed, remarkably adept at subterfuge for such a conspicuous bunch.
Other Drapsk were set searching computer records, Captain Makairi suggesting I wouldn’t want the details of how they proposed to find out the departure logs from Plexis’ notoriously tight-lipped, or whatever, Port Authority. I was happy to agree.
“A course of action, Copelup?” I repeated, sipping my own beverage without tasting it. “Find Morgan. Undo what I’ve done to him.”
The cup was pried free. “And then?”
I narrowed my eyes at the Drapsk. He used that innocent tone, the one meaning he was driving at some point, though what I couldn’t guess. “I hadn’t thought that far,” I confessed. “It seems enough to accomplish, don’t you think? Go somewhere safe from the Clan. Morgan—Morgan will know what we should do.”
“Morgan is not Clan, Mystic One. He is not of your Tribe,” Copelup stated, affixing the refilled cup to his mouth with a smug slurp.
I controlled a flash of temper. Copelup simply stated facts as he, a Drapsk, viewed them. “This does not affect my commitment to him, Skeptic.”
I waited while Copelup finished his drink. “I do not suggest that it should, Mystic One,” the Drapsk said. “My meaning is that he does not share your species’ peril. Only you perceive that. So only you can help them.”
“The Clan?” If two baby-blue eyes had appeared somewhere on his smooth head and winked, I’d have been less surprised. “Why should I care about them?”
“How can you not, Mystic One?”
So straightforward for the Drapsk, I thought, bonded with their Tribes and now, through their world’s reconnection, bonded among their Tribes into one focused unit. They were individuals comfortably nestled in a framework of unity and purpose. I found myself gripping my cup more tightly than necessary. The Clan was a bickering, dangerous collective, driven by ambition and governed by fear.
“It is not the same for us, Copelup,” I found myself explaining, to myself as well as the Drapsk. “We don’t have a home like Drapskii to link us. We don’t even enjoy each other’s company. I think,” I hesitated, then knew with a shiver of cold certainty I was right, “we are a dead end. A mutation about to fade from the universe.”
Copelup inhaled a tentacle, as if mulling over what I said, then spoke around it. “Life survives. Your people want to survive. How can you deny this?”
I stood, pacing away from the table, basically a long, low version of the stools produced by the floor. As temporary as the Clan in the larger scheme of things. “Survive? We’re a disease within the Trade Pact, Copelup. Powerful, deadly. Unrestrained. A bacterium attempts to survive, to reproduce, but at what cost to its host? We’ve interfered with others—kept the Humans from learning about the M’hir. I hate to think what the Council will conclude about you and your Scented Way. There is,” I concluded heavily, “nothing good about us.”
Copelup hooted softly. “There is you, Mystic One.”
“Is there?” I said, thinking of Morgan, thinking of Yihtor and all the unChosen I’d threatened by my mere existence.
“Yes,” he replied sternly. “And I don’t think you can be the only one.”
I shook my head. “The price of our survival is too high. I’m not willing to pay it. As far as I’m concerned, the M’hiray strand of the Clan can end with this generation.”
“So, Mystic One, while avowing you care nothing for your kind, you make this decision for all?”
I stopped pacing and looked at the wise little being. “I can only make decisions for myself, Skeptic.”
“Ah, but if you refuse to help them, are you not imposing this choice?”
The word—Choice—resonated through my thoughts, disturbing what I’d been about to reply in rebuttal, shaking free memories of those decades spent in study, desperate years looking for a solution to the Power-of-Choice. In one sense, it had been a typically selfish, Clannish search, since I looked for a means to end my personal dilemma, but had it not also been a striving to find a solution for every Chooser, to prevent what had appeared with me from b
eing the end of us?
“No,” I denied furiously. “I owe them nothing. I gave them everything I could and they tried to betray me, to kill Morgan, to use me. When I fought them and won, they stole what they wanted. How dare you even think I should help them! Let them help themselves!”
The Skeptic pursed his round, small mouth, tentacles a brilliant red ring like petals on some flower. “Because, Mystic One, it is what you want to do. It is what you’ve always wanted to do. They just haven’t let you.”
I couldn’t see him very clearly; my eyes had filled with burning tears. Something tumbled away inside, some unknown wall between the Sira-I-had-been and the Sira-I’d-become. I’d believed in my kind once. Like the Drapsk, my place and my role within the Clan had sustained me. The actions of a few—not all—had destroyed that belief, setting me adrift and alone, my love for Morgan a saving anchor. He had taught me how to care for another individual, to accept that a stranger might one day be more.
The Drapsk, it seemed, had another lesson for me. I was part of a larger whole, willingly or not. And that whole was my responsibility.
“I can’t forgive them,” I said bitterly, wiping away the tears with a rough hand. Then, with shattering clarity, I knew what I must do. “But—I’ll save them if I can.
“Once Morgan is safe.”
INTERLUDE
“They must have followed you. They certainly didn’t follow me.”
Huido snapped a claw in irritation, but quietly. He was the one on watch, it being simpler to look around corners if one owned eyes on stalks. A pair of those eyes angled back to see the Clansman where he sat on a plas crate. The alleyway offered several such seats, though none strong enough to support Huido’s bulk.
“It’s still your fault. You know those two. Bowman only uses them when she’s after the Clan.”
“True,” Barac admitted, keeping his voice down. He was sure they’d spotted the Enforcers before being seen themselves, but it still begged the question: what were Constables Russell Terk and his partner, the Tolian P’tr wit ’Whix, doing in this part of the All Sapients’ District of Jershi?
Not being inconspicuous, that’s for sure, he thought to himself, as if Terk could ever hide in a crowd. And Tolians, while common elsewhere, were disgusted with Ret 7’s almost perennial dampness, preferring to barter for their exports through hardier species. To see one of the lanky, feather-crested beings stalking along Jershi’s streets, three-clawed feet fastidiously avoiding puddles, was sufficient to stop traffic.
Barac had also heard that the Tolians distrusted the Retians’ ability to distinguish their sentient selves from the local farm stock, but like all such rumors, one had to judge the source.
So these two weren’t sneaking about. “The question remains, Huido, did they follow us or beat us here?”
“Irrelevant,” rumbled the Carasian. “We will find my brother first. We must tell him about the murders—warn him. The killer may be hunting him even now.” A muffled click as Huido expressed his feelings with a threatening wave of one huge claw.
Barac no longer bothered to argue. The Carasian’s belief in Morgan’s innocence was unassailable, although it was based on a conviction that if the Human wanted someone dead, he would do it with more discretion and finesse. This implied an expertise Barac found most unsettling in a being he’d thought he understood.
Unsettling? There was more to it than that. Barac glanced around, suddenly uneasy. They were alone in the short, dark space between the two warehouses. Alone except for some repulsively mobile native fungus, the Retian version of rats, busy adsorbing a pile of food waste. He shook his head, not dismissing the premonition, but uncertain what it meant.
“With Bowman advertising her presence, the port scum will head for their holes,” Huido said thoughtfully, swinging all his eyes to gaze out into the street. “I know a couple of likely spots. Are you ready? They’re out of sight.”
Barac understood the true threat the instant it was too late to fight it. He opened his mouth to cry a warning to his companion, the alleyway fading from sight around him as someone else’s power pulled him into the M’hir . . .
When there was no reply, Huido’s eyestalks swiveled around, one at a time, until all had followed the first to stare back at the alleyway.
An alleyway in which he was quite alone.
Chapter 37
MY legion of feather-headed spies reported in just before the celebratory feast which, Drapsklike, had to occur or the Mystic One would be offended. Since this was the feast I’d unwittingly abandoned by ‘porting to the restaurant and spending the rest of the day questioning Huido’s staff, and since I had no interest in more delays of any kind, the Mystic One tried several times to convince the Drapsk nothing was further from the truth. My protests had fallen on deaf hearing organs. No matter how I tried to convince them, over one hundred Makii happily devoted their time to preparing a second wonderful meal.
So I grimly prepared to enjoy it, intending to do so visibly, unmistakably, and in front of all the Makii and one amused Skeptic, in order to move the immovable and get the Makmora offstation.
But the reports came first. Most were supplied nonverbally and, I was intrigued to witness, simultaneously. The Drapsk stood in a circle around Captain Makairi, plumes shivering toward him. I could feel soft puffs of air where I stood watching from the doorway to the bridge.
Copelup, predictably, was eavesdropping. “There’s a rumor about some disappearing Humans, Mystic One,” he warned. “And a group of other Humans looking for them.”
“If you are going to scent,” Captain Makairi said dryly as he came over to us, the reporting process apparently over, “at least do it well, Skeptic. I have your information, Mystic One,” he added more formally. “It’s not as much or as specific as we hoped to give you. We sincerely apologize for our failure—”
I cut him off, sensing another round of mutual graciousness as lengthy as the pre-feast debate. “I’m sure the Makii have done all possible.”
Copelup had to jump in: “The Mystic One can’t tell you how good the information is, Captain, unless you give it to her. The feast awaits.”
“By all means, don’t delay the feast,” I hurried to assure the Drapsk. “What did they find out?”
“Not all of the reports were based on reliable sources, Mystic One. The Makii cannot vouch for their truthfulness or intent.”
A stool nudged the back of my legs suggestively, and I sat instead of bursting with impatience. I knew better by now. “Then let’s go through it all and decide for ourselves, Captain,” I suggested with what I considered remarkable self-control.
The Drapsk had learned several things of interest, some very odd and useless facts, and at least one item that made it next to impossible to enjoy my feast. I shoveled in bite after bite regardless, comforting myself with the idea that when I’d stuffed myself to the limit, the Drapsk would be satisfied and leave Plexis.
Sector Chief Bowman herself was on-station, an acquaintance I was tempted to renew, but on second thought I realized that could become a serious complication if she learned about the source of the Claws & Jaws’ latest entrée. Her own motives for being here were suspect: her people were asking questions around the Station about Humans, but not just any Humans. They were asking about Human telepaths.
In any Human city, I thought, rubbing an old, fading callus on my left hand, you could ask around and find a master-class keffle-flute player. They might be rare, but not impossible to find. You could round up a dozen or so very good ones. And doubtless locate hordes of beginners torturing the ears of their brave instructors.
Just so with Human telepaths, except, unlike professional performers, they tended to make every effort to avoid notice, this effort increasing with their Talent. Few could do more than feel an uneasiness around other minds, leading most to be solitary, reclusive individuals. Some, like Morgan, found space a kinder environment, away from the weariness of screening out millions of other minds. Many
went mad to an extent, a sad waste of even minimal Talent.
Then, as Morgan had told me, there were those who were lucky—or unlucky—enough to have both Talent and a mentor to train them in its use. Of course, there were two kinds of mentors, split neatly by the ethics they applied to the use of mental abilities: those with some and those without.
Morgan hadn’t told me about the Human who had trained him, though it was obvious from his skill he’d had good instruction at an early age. I was not prone to asking him about his past, not being interested in remembering my own.
Bowman’s Enforcers weren’t hunting telepaths, though there were certainly enough on the other side of the Law to make such a hunt profitable; the Enforcers were collecting information about missing telepaths. Word was, they had lost several of their own recently.
From rumors the Drapsk heard, it wasn’t only law-abiding, well-protected telepaths disappearing. Crime syndicates, including the Grays and Blues of Deneb, and the local Plexis underground had lost telepaths as well, posting huge rewards for their return.
I wasn’t sure how all this fit into the timing of the attack on me, the dead Clansman in the freezer, or where Morgan, Barac, and Huido had gone. I was sure I didn’t like the sound of it. Premonition might be a skill I lacked, but it didn’t take the taste of trouble in the M’hir to know who might be interested in Human telepaths and why. I didn’t doubt the same thought had crossed Bowman’s mind: the Clan Council. They’d forbidden my Joining with Morgan on the grounds of species’ purity. Yet they’d been willing to use him if it brought my body into its reproductive state.
Who better to blame? The Council had motive, and they certainly had the ability to overpower a Human telepath. I thought only Morgan would be able to withstand them—and that only long enough to flee.
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