The Gentle Seduction

by Marc Stiegler

  With a deep breath I swore revenge, again. And again I remembered the promise I had made, to save Forma first.

  I laughed, maliciously. It would be ridiculously easy to save Forma. The Playmaster had made a terrible mistake setting me up as the murderer, because he had also set me up as the invincible power behind the murders. The whole planet trembled at my touch, the touch of the assassin.

  When I had announced from Glitter that I was departing, but that I would return the following day, all of Forma jumped to clear airspace; they knew I would only announce my plans if I could not be stopped.

  They had seen me die on stage, under the eyes of their own cameras, in Springform. Yet I had lived to kill again in Summer. They thought I was an immortal god. They were fools.

  Today, four more people would die.

  But perhaps other people's lives, or at least some of the time of their lives, would be saved.

  "Safire?"

  "Yes, Gibs."

  "Call the heads of state of Forma."

  "All at once?"

  "Oh, start with the Directress of Winterform."

  One by one Safire and I went through the names, telling them to meet me in sixteen hours at Skycrest for a brief trip to the radiation belt.

  The Sirians and Omegarans were furious, I was sure; but they could only attack me if they attacked together, in mutual trust. I pointed out to the Sirian commander that the Omegaran commander looked the right age to need a mindshift; I made a reciprocal comment to the Omegaran. Fearful that I had made a deal with their enemy, each fumed in silence. Each held his fleet idle.

  At the appointed time, I ferried the Forman leaders in Glitter up to the Safire. They were impressed, which was why I took them aloft: Safire is a big ship. She carries a cargo of 2000 clone bodies, with the facilities to manufacture more, plus two entire Transfer systems (in case one breaks down), enough room for a twenty man crew (though I live alone most of the time), and a composite arsenal of all the deadliest weapons devised by the most advanced planets in the reaches of Man.

  I looked at my guests from the head of the conference table. There was the Grantsman of Summerform with his wife; they seemed more concerned with their own lives than with the death of their daughter Karmel. That concern explained why I had met with Karmel on the beach and had been touched by her with impunity: the Grantsman had been afraid to interfere. I could understand their concern; I could not appreciate it. Karmel had been far more worthy than her parents.

  There was Hawk Keensight of Springform. I smiled at him; he sweated. I suspected he might know more about the Playmaster. In time he would tell me everything he knew. People talk a great deal when their lives are at stake.

  There was President Bardon of Fallform. He was my only current suspect for Playmaster, though Safire had already told me he lacked the tungstalloy skull of one with many Transfers. Also, he was terrified that he would not receive Transfer, a puzzling level of fear for the one I sought. It mattered little; he too would speak to me when his time came to lie beneath my knife.

  And there was the Directress of Winterform. Her hair was silver, and she needed Transfer soon, or it would be too late. Yet she did not flinch under my steady gaze. She was a truly regal lady.

  "So far, I have killed only secondary leaders in your governments," I began. "But as you now see, the execution of those who don't measure up is the least of my tools. I am a mindshifter first, and an assassin second.

  "I have bad news for you," I continued. "The Sirians and the Omegarans are powerless, here on the Frontier." I stood erect, hands behind my back. It had been long since I projected not merely presence, but power; yet I remembered. "Power on Forma lies with the Frontier mindshifter in whose jurisdiction you lie." I smiled. "My jurisdiction."

  I explained to them the nature of the system. They believed. I explained to them what would have to happen, if any of them hoped for a second lifetime. They understood. I appointed a council of respected scientistsfrom each form, to mediate the use of the radiation belt. They accepted.

  The war ended.

  I returned the leaders to their respective peoples. The Directress of Winterform stayed long enough to have a private chat. She was a good person. I would arrange her Transfer.

  I shuddered; I still didn't know if I could shift a mind. I didn't want to find out.

  The Playmaster seemed somehow far from my mind; I basked for a moment in knowing that I had done a good thing, that with the end of the feud between the forms, thousands of people would live better lives.

  I took Glitter back into the Rift, where I had met Sharyn. As I stepped into the burned-out clearing I could smell the trees and the plants, growing fast to heal the wound. The sun sat in its low throne, frozen between the mountain ridges, staring at the Eye of Forma. I walked through the quiet rustle of the leaves.

  When I returned, I heard a woman's voice singing, from inside Glitter. It was not Safire's voice.

  With a burst of speed I jumped through the hatch to surprise the intruder.

  She turned from her inspection of my paintings. "Have you found the Master yet?"

  "No." I studied her; she didn't appear to be armed. "Get out of my ship."

  She laughed; it came from inside, through many layers, as had Keara's laughter.

  "Do you still seek the Master?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  She shook her head lightly, with a knowledge of her own power that reminded me of Sharyn. "You must stop your search," she whispered. "You will not find what you seek." She stared at me, with the harsh gaze only Rainbow could bestow.

  I stood speechless.

  She moved forward, flowing like water, flowing like Karmel.

  "They're dead!" I cried, images of the past cascading through my head.

  "They're gone," she continued so softly.

  We stood locked in tableau. "You have lived many lives," I accused her.

  "Yes." She closed her eyes in pain. "Even on this one planet, I have worn many bodies." She opened her eyes. "In other lives I have been an actress. And a mindshifter. Lately, I have been a teacher."

  I choked. "Why did you do this?"

  "I didn't want to kill anyone, yet I had to make them understand how easily they could be killed. The Sirians had completely brainwashed them by the time we investigated." She smiled. "I had started working my way through the power structures, without a real plan, when you arrived. Then, you gave me your idea for assassinations. I only wish I had trusted you more, to let you know."

  "Don't apologize." Another thought struck me. "Wendy?"

  The woman looked away. "I told her to let you protect yourself. I told her you could survive in ways she'd never dreamed. She didn't believe me."

  "You, too, are only a mortal god."

  She seemed amused. "No. I am only a mortal woman." She looked at me again, almost afraid. "I have used you."

  I thought about it. Today, for the first time in a lifetime, I had a clear mind. "You gave me purpose."

  "I hurt you."

  "You gave me hope."

  "You should hate me."

  "I must love you." I took her in my arms. We stood embraced for a long moment.

  "Safire," I commanded, "dim the lights." The sharp edges of the room faded.

  "Safire," the woman said, "gentle music." A waltz began to play.

  I softened my hold on my lady. "What is your name?" I asked.

  She laughed. "I have held a thousand names. Yet I am who I am. Name me." We began to dance.

  Tomorrow, four more people would live.

  Too Loving A Touch

  Too many cash prizes, offered by skeptics investigating psychic powers, have gone unclaimed for the rational mind to take claims of extrasensory perception too seriously.

  And yet I still remember an incident from my adolescence, when I desperately needed a young woman's phone number (well, it seemed desperate at the time: if I did not get her number in the next 48 hours, I knew my life would be ruined). I remember lying in
bed, feverish with my horror that my last opportunity for happiness would pass me by. I remember how loud and fast my heartbeat grew, how dry my mouth became, how totally my reasoning power left me.

  So I lay there unable to think or sleep. Then suddenly I was calm. My heart stopped racing, and I was happy. For no clear or compelling reason, I was quite sure that a particular friend of mine would call, and that he would have the magic number even though he had no more access to the person or the number than I.

  Then the phone rang.

  The psychologists of today have a boxful of explanations for such events. I myself prefer any one of a dozen of their explanations to the mystical alternative. Still, it is most important to remember the incidents in your life that violate your expectations. Psychologists have also proved that the surprising, disconcerting incidents are the ones we are most likely to forget. This is perhaps the ultimate tragedy—for these incidents are the only ones that point out the flaws in our views, that would enable us to fix and improve the models of the world we use to mold our expectations.

  And let's face it—no matter how many times we prove that ESP does not exist, we will never be able to disprove it entirely. Just as the experiments in physics that endlessly seek a proton decay can only increase the number of billions of protons needed to detect one, so we can only restrict the probability of psychic events to increasingly smaller odds. We can never reach zero.

  And for anyone who believes in psychic phenomenon, I have good news as well: I have every faith that, if someone were to prove the existence of ESP one day, the physicists and the psychologists would have plausible explanations for it the day after. Goodness, the people who brought us outrageously counterintuitive explanations of the universe like quantum chromodynamics and Heisenberg uncertainty should surely be able to explain a simple thing like telepathy!

  Too Loving A Touch

  Veddin's eyes closed as his warship skipped into normal space. His concentration focussed on his ship's sensors. Images poured through the shiplink embedded in his cerebellum. He had expected to find yet another Squishy ambush, but he floated safe and easy amidst his own robot fleet.

  He opened his eyes, to see the beauty of normal space himself. The hard points of starlight and the brilliant sun of the Hydra system blazed with cheer.

  Veddin's vision merged again with the images from the DareDrop's sensors. The scene telescoped. The sun brightened, then dimmed as the DareDrop's computer screened its rays. Soon Hydra floated just beyond Veddin's nose. It was a lustrous blue and white jewel, unlike anything in the FreeFed. His own home planet, Kaylanx, was perhaps more colorful with its violent swirls of red, green, and violet, but Kaylanx was not warm, as was Hydra.

  He nudged his ship towards the planet. A small contingent of the main fleet followed. Senships scattered into early-warning array around the system.

  This was foolish, Veddin realized—using standard military tactics just outside the one invincible planet in the galaxy. He almost ordered the senships back to the main fleet. But with a shrug he let them go. What else could he do with them, after all? For the first time, he understood why the Directorate had let him bring his fleet; now that FreeFed had been found by the larger human civilization, the Directorate had less use for the fleet than Veddin now had for the senships.

  Something about Hydra disturbed Veddin. A troubled frown formed, then faded as he realized what was missing: There were neither moons nor battle-stations around the planet. His sensors backed off a bit and caught a single space station glinting in the sun. It was surrounded by gigantic freighters from the rest of human space. They were beautiful, and Veddin felt awed by the builders of these craft that dwarfed the DareDrop.

  He also felt an unreasonable surge of joy, being here. It was different from anything he'd ever felt before, a joy that filled parts of his soul that until now had been empty.

  Alerted by the sensation, almost alarmed, Veddin searched for an explanation. Meanwhile the joy grew stronger.

  "Commander of the unidentified war fleet, this is maneuver control. Please identify yourself." The voice came not through any of the DareDrop's communications channels, but through his mind itself. It reminded him of his first contact with a Hydran Couple, as the savage Battle of Kaylanx Moons climaxed. That had been just before the Hydrans drove the Squishy fleet terror-stricken back into their own territory.

  "This is Colonel Veddin Zhukpokrovsk, from the planet of Kaylanx, requesting permission to dock," Veddin thought for the controller.

  The sternness of the controller's first thought dissolved. "Veddin Zhukpokrovsk! We've been worried about you!"

  Veddin must have transmitted his bafflement, because the controller went on. "The Seekers told us to expect you several days ago. When you didn't show up on schedule, Tarn and Tara Westfall became concerned—and when Tarn gets concerned, everybody gets concerned!"

  Veddin was still baffled. He had come here to Touch Autumn Westfall, but . . .

  "Tarn is her father, you ninny. Tarn and Tara are the commissioners of Hydra."

  "They're what!?"

  "Didn't anybody tell you that you have a psi-resonant pair bond to the commissioners' daughter?" The controller chuckled. "Probably not. The Seekers wouldn't consider it a proper thing to mention."

  Veddin was still dazed; the controller's thought pattern changed, and changed subjects as well. "Dear Colonel, why'd you bring a fleet with you? You certainly don't need it, and I suspect there's a rule against it somewhere."

  Veddin was still trying to understand why the speaker's "voice" had changed. There were two chuckles this time, one in each "voice." "We're a Couple, silly," they said in unison.

  Veddin shook his head; of course there were two of them, forming a single psi-resonance.

  "Are you going to answer our question, or are you going to try to blast us out of space?" the controllers jested.

  He tried to remember their question, and answered just as they were about to repeat it. "I brought my fleet in case I was ambushed."

  Loud giggles threaded through his mind. Veddin felt aggravated anger. "Thank the Lords I did, too. I would've been killed if it hadn't been for my robots."

  "What?!" The laughter stopped; Veddin thought he could sense a trace of horror mixed with their shock.

  He waited till the shock wore off, then told them about the ambush that occurred shortly after he left Kaylanx. Disbelief colored the controllers' thoughts so much that Veddin finally linked them with the DareDrop, so they could see and feel the giant hole gouged in her side by an enemy missile. If the warhead hadn't been a dud . . . well, Veddin never would have known about it.

  When he finished, the controllers were grim. "We'll have to tell the commissioners. I've never heard of an attack on humans from a species that knew about us."

  The Couple vanished from his mind. The unexplained joy he had felt earlier returned, even stronger now than before.

  Another Couple Touched his mind. "Veddin?"

  "That's me," Veddin acknowledged, still contemplating the joy.

  The new Couple saw his contemplation and shared his joy. "You're getting closer to your touched-one. Autumn feels the same thing." An image of a young woman appeared in his mind, sent by Tarn and Tara Westfall—for the Westfalls were the Couple who now contacted him. Another mind touched his, and he could see through Autumn's eyes a pair of delicate woman's hands, and he could look out the cockpit of a hoverplane at the oceans below. He knew that Autumn could see the DareDrop's control room in much the same manner, through the link her parents provided.

  "I am coming," was the message Autumn and Veddin exchanged before the contact dissolved.

  "It will be better, of course, when you touch one another," the Westfalls explained to him. "For now, however, you'd better concentrate on docking. Or can your ship enter the atmosphere?"

  "I can land anywhere," Veddin replied.

  "Excellent. I'll put you in touch with spaceport control."

  "Isn't there some kind o
f Customs inspection?"

  "Ah, yes. Customs. Are you carrying anything dangerous—firearms, drugs, or potentially diseased foods, animals, or plants?"

  "Nothing except a few gigaton-equivalents in weaponry."

  "Are there safety devices to prevent misfiring?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you planning to use these weapons against us?"

  "No."

  "That's what the folks at the space station thought. Customs inspection ended."

  "What?"

  "Customs is much easier when you can just see what's in a person's mind. One thing, though." The thought was wryly amused.

  "What's that?"

  "Leave your war robots in orbit. There's really no need to land them."

  "Sure." Veddin blushed an apology, but the Westfalls were already gone.

  The landing was unlike any other. In the FreeFed, all ship-to-shore communication was handled via the ship's communication channels. Here, there were all the normal communication and detection electroptics, but in addition there was a mental link with the ground controller. Veddin found himself acting as a passive relay between the ship and the port.

  At least he wasn't alone in being upset by the arrangement; the port controller had never dealt with a pilot who was in direct mental communication with his ship, either. "All in all, I'm glad it's over," the controller admitted to Veddin as the ship touched down. "It takes a bit to adjust to that kind of arrangement." His thoughts turned sympathetic. "I fear that for you, though, the adjusting is just about to begin."

  Veddin grimaced. The Seekers, when they first told him that he was half of a Couple, warned him that Hydra was different from Kaylanx. "Less sex, more laughter," was their capsule description. It had been funny, at the time: the Seekers had been so grave, while discussing sex and laughter, of all things! Here, their warning took on new meaning. Veddin had had trouble just finding a traffic controller who didn't giggle incessantly. The Seekers' warning had been true, despite its irony.