He rubbed his face with his hands.
“I've been trained to think on my feet,” he said, “but, lately, my mind has not been working as well as it should be. The medications they have been pumping into my bloodstream—none of them are doing my brain any good.”
“You haven't been here all that long. Some of us have been kept here long enough that the drugs no longer confuse us much. Of us mind-speakers, I'm probably in the best shape; the woman who has claimed me is not as cruel, or demanding as most of the others. You have the worst one of them; the truth is that the men not yet claimed by a particular woman heaved a sigh of relief when that one brought you, and stated her claim.
“But you are also a strong man, a fighter, and you have the connection to a woman who is a powerful psychic. My kind have discussed this among ourselves and we think that if we work together with you, and also with your Sarah, we can do something. Your presence, and the presence of your woman, in the background, has given us hope. We had thought to get information to our people via Gamo's wife, but she is not strong enough to help us, especially under such distressing circumstances.”
“And you're saying that Sarah, the powerhouse that she is, could perhaps help us all,” Coryn said.
He pondered for a moment, trying to force his thoughts to move in their usual, orderly fashion.
“Is there some way I could draw her into a mental rapport with you, let's say?” he asked. “The communication between the two of you would be much less emotionally wrought than the one between her and me. It would probably be easier to do it that way.”
“If I have your permission to try to mind-touch her, I will do so, the next time she approaches you. I can explain to her, if she doesn't already understand, how distraught you are.”
**
Mel Jourda thought that it was a good idea if the Diplomatic Cruiser made a slight detour en route to the Confederation Government Base via the Space Station RES in order to drop Sarah and Lindy there. At the RES Port, even before Mel and Anya had finished saying their goodbyes, and had returned to the Cruiser, the two women were met by a couple of the little (and sometimes not so little) electric vehicles known as min-autos, which formed a part of the Station's public transportation system. They were manned by a total of four burly body guards—somebody was taking safety seriously in the wake of Coryn's kidnapping.
“I sort of had the pilot drop a hint to the Station Authorities when he announced the Cruiser's imminent arrival,” Mel said with a grin, when Lindy gawked at the welcoming committee which the Customs Officer who had taken charge of them, introduced as the people in charge of their safety.
“Looks like they're out-Agenting the Agency,” Lindy responded. “Not hard to do these days, of course, what with Marcues acting like a complete idiot.”
The guards hustled the women and their luggage into the cars, one per vehicle, and piled in themselves, looking formidable.
“Whatever you do, keep that wee lady safe,” Lindy admonished the big men settling Sarah into her seat, even while she herself was being herded into the other vehicle.
“There's not a chance of any baddie getting close to her with us on the job,” the driver promised Lindy airily. “If they even know that this is where the talented Witch happens to be.”
“So you know who, or what, I am,” Sarah said as the min-auto took off. “I might get a swelled head, considering how many people—of all descriptions—want a piece of me these days.”
She determinedly kept her tone light. No point in dripping doom and gloom on people who she most likely would never see again.
“Yeah,” the guy who had sat beside her in the back, said. “Our boss at Station Security did a thorough briefing, and she had dug up as much information as she could before she spoke. And, of course, we're perfectly aware that those Organization Elites make a habit of coming here to play, because nobody is really supposed to have fun in their part of the Galaxy. We keep an eye on them, though I'm not sure that the notion that we might watch them carefully, fits into their worldview.”
“However, from what The Boss said about you,” threw in the guard who was driving, “I expected you to be a tall, regal-looking woman. But, you're....”
He sounded slightly embarrassed as his voice trailed off.
“...a skinny, black-haired, little chit,” Sarah finished with a giggle. “Isn't there some old saying about good things coming in small packages? But there are Kordean Witches who fit your image, never fear. Marlyss, the Eldest of the Circle of the Twelve, for instance is a tall, black-haired lady, ram-rod straight, though no longer young. And Dian, also of that Circle, is a tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned beauty; she'd turn heads even on this Station, according to the estimates of those who know both.”
It was a relief to be able to talk like this with kindly strangers. The chatter created a welcome diversion; her mind focused on something other than Coryn's distress, which she knew, he was trying to shield her from, and, as far as she could tell, not really succeeding. Or maybe he was succeeding... and if that was so, the sooner that she, and Lindy's Team, got him extricated from the Neotsarian hands, the better!
The two vehicles entered the innards of an elaborate structure through a parkade entrance.
“Is this the hotel at which Lindy booked us rooms?” Sarah asked, puzzled.
There had been no Hotel sign on the facade.
“No,” the guard in the back said. “The Boss cancelled that booking, and told us to bring you here, to the VIP Centre. Better Security; we do it ourselves. And the B-sculptor with whom you have an appointment, has his premises in the building.”
“Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to the Authorities of this Space Station, if a visiting Kordean Witch was kidnapped here, by The Organization Hounds?” one of the guards accompanying Lindy asked as she protested the change of accommodations as she climbed out of the min-auto. “This Station would never live it down. We are supposed to be welcoming to everyone, and our visitors are supposed to be safe, no matter who they are. Any given day there are at least a few Neotsarian Elites walking our promenades. We do not want to risk their, and your little Witch's paths crossing, believe you me.”
Lindy looked at Sarah, and sighed.
“Mel must have laid it on pretty thick,” she said. “That's why he had that grin on his face.”
“Hey, let's just enjoy the luxury of the VIP Centre,” Sarah responded. “We didn't come for a shopping expedition, anyway. Though I wouldn't mind doing that someday in the future, when my life is ordinary, and I don't have to be looking over my shoulder all the time.
“I bet the rooms in this place are fantastic, and the food's great—which reminds me, I am hungry. Is there a restaurant to which we can safely go, or do we have to order in?”
“There's a very good restaurant in the building,” the guard who had answered Lindy told them. Sarah judged that he was the leader of the Security Team. “We'll show you there as soon as we've settled you into your suite.”
**
Later that evening, when Lindy had sat down at the suite's console to continue with the work of putting together the Team and the Mission, Sarah slipped into the bedroom into which the guards had set her bag, and lay down on the large bed. The irony was, she sighed to herself, that the room would have been a lovely place in which to spend time with Coryn; sniffling and giggling, she considered the fact that the bed could have accommodated them, and a couple of rambunctious kids, too!
She dried her eyes, and blew her nose with the luxurious wipes provided, and uncovered her amarto, which, these days, almost always was encased in a browhorn testicle sac, to insulate it from detection by even the most sophisticated equipment. Of course, the Stone was also useless to her inside this insulation, which was why she now uncovered it.
She felt a bit uneasy, baring the amarto on a Space Station known to welcome Neotsarian Pleasure-seekers, but none of them could have the slightest idea that she was on the Station, and besides, there wer
e layers of Security between her and anyone wandering the walkways of RES. And she had not tried to reach out to Coryn for some time, not since she had boarded the Diplomatic Corps Cruiser. She had been hoping that Coryn would finally be ready to let her mind touch his, instead of hiding behind the red haze of anger and pain as he had been doing since soon after the kidnapping. She wanted to know what was happening to him, regardless of how bad it was; she wanted him to accept comfort from her, wanted to reassure him that whatever was being done to him, whatever he was being forced to do, he was still her one true love, and she would never give up on him.
“Not that I could,” she muttered to herself. “We're bound by the Blessing of the Twelve, and the accompanying Curse. Whatever happens dearest, we're in it together.”
She calmed herself as she had been taught during the earliest lessons that she had taken at the Ferhil Stones Stronghold, and concentrated on her Stone. She asked to mentally travel to her beloved, and was suddenly among the myriad stars of the Milky Way, shooting past them at a speed that seemed impossibly fast even to her. She barely had time to acknowledge, and gasp at, the speed when she was already there, the place where Coryn was being kept.
Occasionally, when she had made this trip, she had been drawn to a different place, but there Coryn's mind was so closed, and rage-filled, that she had totally failed to make contact, other than to know that he was behind a certain closed door and that awful Organization Elite woman, Evella Copoz, was there with him! Those times she had mentally turned around and returned to her body, completely shaken! Was that what the Neotsarians had wanted him for? To force him to be an unwilling toy for that creature he had called Evil Evella?
This time, however, the end of her quest was at the pastoral place where at least two dozen young men, including Coryn, were penned into an enclosure with a large, rambling, low-slung building in the middle, and guarded by a dozen, ferocious, large cat-animals, which must have been kept underfed on purpose, since their thoughts seemed to be concentrated on getting their fangs on another mouthful of flesh. They in their turn were penned around the premises; a simple means of making sure that the prisoners did not escape on foot.
These cats were nothing like the Greencat. Nevertheless, in her astral form she had taken to stopping, for a moment, to soothe one or two of them, every time she travelled by them, and they seemed to respond to the calming thoughts she offered. They were still hungry after she had found and stroked the pleasure centres of their brains, but by now they all recognized her mental presence, and accepted it. She wondered whether, when the time came, she would be able walk among them in flesh, without inciting an attack.
She found Coryn sitting on a bench on the top of a small, grassy rise, next to the building, and overlooking the fenced wood which contained the wild cats. He looked strained—Sarah realized, with pain of her own, that the experience was going to haunt him for years to come—but, somehow, perhaps a tiny bit more open to mental penetration that he had been up until now. Had he allowed his determined defences to droop just a little?
“Coryn, love,” she mindspoke, like she had a number of times before, only to have him burrow into himself, and away from her.
This time, a visible shudder ran down his body at her thought. In her astral form, she quickly checked to see if there were witnesses to his reaction; she didn't think that it was good if the female workers who were the de facto jailers, saw it. But the only other person out, on this side of the building was a young, dark-skinned, wiry male, who was lying on the turf which passed for grass, on his back, looking cool as a cucumber. One of the enslaved pleasure-givers, surely.
“Sarah, I can't talk,” Coryn subvocalized. “I'll break down completely if I try. But Dyron, here, wants to communicate with you. He's an ESPer, but he said he needed me as a go-between to contact you.”
Of course. In mind-to-mind communications you couldn't just barge in; your target had to be, at the very least, open to interruption. And she had not been; she had been concentrating on her man, and trying to make sense of his surroundings, in order to use that knowledge, in the future, against his imprisoners.
She turned her attention to the dark man, after a giving Coryn a quick mental caress, hoping that it would not send him into an emotional tailspin.
“Hello, Dyron,” she subvocalized.
“Hello, Sarah, is it?” There was a gentle kindliness to the personality which drew close to her. “I promised Coryn that I would try to explain how it is with him, why he is barricading himself from you. That woman he has been given to is the worst of those who come here, by quite a lot, and many of them are not nice. Being forced to do her bidding, in the intimate, and sadistic fashion that she demands it, is eating him up from the inside. He needs to endure until he can get out of this trap, and he feels that the best way to endure is to build psychic barriers around himself.”
He sounded sad.
“Is there any way that you and yours could help him—and the rest of us?”
“We're working on it, believe me,” Sarah responded. “Tell Coryn that we've put a Team together. Or, his old friend, Lindy, has. I know that he doesn't want me to come along, but Lindy figured out a way to bring me; we're working on that, right now. You and he will have to feel for my psychic signature to know me when we arrive; Coryn won't recognize me in person.
“Only thing is that I don't know how long this is going to take; longer than I want it to, that's for sure. I don't know how long Coryn can last; I hope we get there in time.”
“When he hears that help is on the way, he'll perk up,” said Dyron confidently. “He's a strong individual.
“I just wish that there was something that we here could do for ourselves.”
“I'd like to make a suggestion of something for you to do. If there are others with psychic abilities among the prisoners, they could do it, too.”
“I'm listening.”
“You could make friends with the wild cats out there. They are approachable. And, by the way, I'm going to have to stay out of contact from now on, until I'm there in person. As the other person, that is.”
“Ah. Good idea about the cats. And we will be waiting—for this other person, and her companions.”
Dyron gifted her with a mental grin.
**
Lindy burst into Sarah's room just as she was lacing up the browhorn testicle sac to conceal her amarto.
“Were you using your Stone, just now?” she demanded, her face pale. “If so, hide it, hide it, hide it! The Head of Security just came in to say that there are a couple of big guys in the lobby, only one of them a Hound—the other one is a regular Terran—claiming that there's something in the building that belongs to them, and they damn well want it! They were zeroing in on it with a half-egg of an electronic gadget! Remember those detectors?”
“Shit!” Sarah cussed. “An amarto-detector; must be a really good one, since it picked up my Stone through all these floors and walls! Oh damn! Well the Stone's insulated now; they should have lost the trace! But they know that there's one in the building!”
She was not sure whether she wanted to howl or cry. It was so frustrating! Sometimes it felt like she never had room to move!
“What were you doing?” Lindy asked, looking concerned.
“I wanted to take a last look at how Coryn's doing,” Sarah replied, sighing.
Lindy sighed, too. It was hard to not think of Evil Evella.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Pretty bad. But he did reach out to me the tiniest bit. Enough to direct my attention to another of the prisoners, who happens to be an ESPer, too. That fellow wanted to know if I could do something to send help to Coryn and the others, and I told him that we were coming, only I had no idea how long it would take. He seemed to take heart even from that little bit of hope, and promised to speak with Coryn.”
Abruptly, Sarah grinned.
“He said that he wished there was something that he could do, and I told him that he—and any
other sensitives that might be on the premises—ought to try to make friends with the wild cats guarding the compound. He seemed to like the idea; let's hope it works.”
“That's good, and, I believe that our guards are keeping us safe. I'll go and talk to the Security Lady, and thank her for alerting us. Amarto-detector or no, the enemy guys aren't going to get in here, and with your Stone back under wraps, they won't know where to look for it.”
“As long as they don't see my black hair and pale face,” Sarah sighed.
“They won't. And pretty soon, Simple Sister, you'll look nothing like a Kordean Witch!”
Lindy reached over to give the younger woman a quick hug before leaving the room. She was growing fond of Coryn's wife; Sarah had a lot of spirit. It was not going to be difficult to behave in a fiercely protective manner towards the sister Sarah was going to be impersonating!
“Yeah, she was using it,” she told the Head of Security, a woman as professional-looking as she herself was, who was waiting to hear the news in the suite's sitting room. “She was actually doing something related to our work. But when I went in, she had finished, and was putting the Stone back into its insulation. So by now the Hound and his companion ought to be scratching their heads.”
“They're not scratching their heads; they're screaming at the guy downstairs.” The Security Woman had her com out. “They want to know what we did with it! They want it. They're claiming that it belongs to them!”
“That's a bunch of crock!” Lindy said, suddenly angry. “They've got bloody nerve, claiming ownership of a Kordean Witch's Stone! The only person that amarto belongs to is Sarah!”
“Bloody nerve is one thing those boys have in spades,” the Security Woman assented. “The Station Authorities have been too accommodating of the dorks, to get them to spend their money here. They think that they can do any damn fool thing, and get away with it!
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