Chapter 2
Kevin Vacit sighed wearily as he settled behind his desk. At seventy, he had no right to feel and look as well as he did, but that didn't stop him from wishing he felt better. He began going through the daily reports, and did feel better. Twenty new registered teeps, one a potential P12-and as good, some fourteen detected who had somehow slipped through the Corps' fingers. Evolution. The somewhat rough birth of the Central African Block was finally smoothing out, and commercial teeps were once again profitable there. The rebuilding was going well on Mars, and EarthForce had requested five more telepaths to keep security tight on the Red Planet. His desk link burred. "Sir?" his secretary asked. "Yes?" "One of the interns to see you." "An intern?" "Yes, sir." "What does he want'? I don't have any appointments, do I?" "No, sir. But she says to tell you her name is Alexander. Natasha Alexander." "Oh. Send her in." A moment later the door cracked, and a young woman stepped through. He caught himself staring; the resemblance was striking. Oh, of course she was a woman-quite beautiful at that-but with that queue of flaming red hair and upturned nose, she so strongly resembled Monkey that he almost expected to hear his first mentor 's taunting voice in his mind. Then she turned, and he couldn't see it anymore. "Sir?" 133 "Sorry, Intern," he said. "You reminded me of someone." "That would be my mother, Michelle Alexander. I understand that the two of you were friends-that you worked for Senator Crawford together." He nodded. "Indeed. I was fond of your mother. I was sorry to hear about her death." Natasha met his gaze levelly. "I miss her. She was a good friend, perhaps my best. But the Corps is mother and the Corps is father, sir." "Yes," he replied. "I'm glad we can be a comfort to you. And I hope you further understand that the friendship between your mother and I was just that-between us." "Oh-yes, sir. I've come to ask no favors of you." "Good. I've followed your progress, of course. You've been a model student here and an exemplary intern. I wouldn't want to see you mar your record by seeking some sort of favoritism. After all, as you say, the Corps is mother and father-and good parents cannot play favorites." "I understand completely. No, sir, I've come to you because of something I discovered in my research. I thought I should bring it to your attention, personally, myself." "Why did you feel the need to do that, rather than passing it up through proper channels? I assure you, I review all research that's done here." "Yes, sir. But some things my mother said led me to believe it was best I come to you directly. l tried to make an appointment-" "-but the director doesn't see interns by appointment, I know. I have to admit, Ms. Alexander, you've piqued my curiosity. Exactly what did Michelle tell you?" "That you and she shared a common curiosity about the origins of telepathy. It was almost an obsession of hers, and I gathered that you were-um-very interested in it, too." He allowed himself a smile. "Yes. It's an important question, don't you think? Those in the know realized very early on that seeps must have been the product of genetic manipulation. That was before my time, of course, and the knowledge was suppressed to prevent panic. They were already killing teeps in those days, and the idea that some government or corporation had created teeps for some devious, sinister reason-" He broke off. "Are you saying that you have the answer?" "Sir, I have the beginnings of an answer." "What might those beginnings be?" "That we've been looking in the wrong place. After sixty-five years, I think we can be certain that it was no corporation or government. For one thing, we still don't know exactly how telepathy-much less telekinesis-operates. On the genetic side, we've come to understand that the level of sophistication required to engineer it would have produced spin-off technologies that we simply have never seen." "Agreed. But this is nothing new." "I've turned up something new, sir, but I don't know what to make of it. Perhaps you will." "Go on." "My specialty is actually in history and anthropology. I was hoping to be placed with the proposed applied social sciences division , but it never materialized." Kevin shook his head. "No. Normals aren't quite ready to have their lives planned by teeps." "Of course, and so I'm interning as a business teep. I'm only a P5-" "Nothing to be ashamed of. Speaking as a P-aught." "I know. Though I think Mom was disap-well, that's neither here nor there. My point, sir, was that I did a rather involved project on the syncretism and evolution of twenty-first-century religious cults." He nodded for her to go on. "You see, when times change rapidly-or catastrophically- there is a tendency for people to become dissatisfied with traditional religions and seek something new. Looked at historically, we see flashpoints in which hundreds of small religions arise-the two best examples I can think of are the early Christian era and the late twentieth century. And now, of course, in the wake of the Centauri and the perspective that brought. . ." "I'm familiar with the phenomenon. Sort of a natural selection process, wouldn't you say? A variety of new religions are born, and those that best satisfy the needs of people survive. The rest vanish." "Yes, sir. You can count on one hand the number of actually new religions in the last two thousand years that have lasted. Anyway , that's what I studied. Obscure, I know. I was looking at the twenty-first century, which for the most part was a period of winnowing -the hundreds of late twentieth cults were dying out and consolidating. But I ran across a small anomaly." "That being?" "A number of small cults floresced in the twenty-sixties. At first I thought they were hang-ons from some of the late twentieth astronaut /angel cults-" "Astronaut/angels?" "Yes, sir. That's really a glib label for a broad phenomenon. Velikovskians , Raeleans, Heaven's Gate-it was basically a belief that aliens had visited or were visiting Earth, that our cultures, religions , destinies, perhaps even our genetic makeup had been shaped by ancient, godlike astronauts. Our legends of gods and angels and so forth were supposed to be race memories of those visitors. We now see the cults as an effort to syncretize science with ancient modes of belief, and most of these cults had waned by the twenty-twenties." "But they came back in the twenty-sixties?" "Briefly. That stands out because they all peaked in popularity during a three-year period between 2059 and 2062. After that they faded again, and by the end of the next decade, there is no record of them-as such." "The timing aside, what's so odd about that?" "If you excuse me, sir, I don't think the timing is aside-it's the point. My great-grandmother-this isn't well known, sir-before she joined the MRA, my great-grandmother Desa was something of a, ah . . . "She was a mercenary, a grifter, and at times a thief. I knew her well. Anything dubious she did in her youth was more than made up for by years of faithful service and her heroic death." "Yes, sir. As you say. In the early twenty-one-teens she led a religious cult-purely a scam on her part, she never believed in it. It was a sort of Mayan-prophecy religion, but with very strong echoes of the astronauttangel cults. So I checked, and sure enough, she had pieced her phony religion together from some of the things her father really believed." Kevin leaned forward, frowning. "What are you saying?" "I checked membership against the teep registration base, and did some basic genealogical extrapolation. I found that sixty percent of registered teeps are descended from a member of one of those cults. The other forty percent I don't have enough data for. I also ran the stats for the general population-only one person in two thousand living today had ancestors in one of the cults." "So it's not a coincidence or an artifact. Teeps really are descended from these cultists." "Yes, sir." "How much further can you go with this?" "Well, I was working on a synthesis-trying to pull together some of the common elements of the various cults. I've also got the locations of some of their worship locales-a cave in Yucatan, an old Buddhist temple in China, a mountaintop shrine in the Philippines. I think those bear checking out." "You say you were working on this synthesis." "Well, yes, sir. Now I'm an intern in the commercial division, so I won't have time to-" "How would you like to work with my office? I could put you on this full-time." She made no attempt to hide her joy at that suggestion. "That would be wonderful, sir." "Good. I'll make the arrangements." Chapter 3
Fiona woke in pitch darkness. She was in a coffin. The walls were of some soft, padded substance that she could not tear. Air sighed onto her face from a small tube. If she wiggled, she
found she could move several inches in any direction. She could turn over, though it hurt her leg, which was encased in a heavy cast. She could not sit up-and she didn't quite have enough room to pull into a fetal position. "Where am l?" she whispered. A few instants later she was screaming it, as her limbs began to itch, and then her belly, and her brain. And then she couldn't stand it, the very thought that she couldn't move her limbs through their full range of motion. She didn't know how long that panic lasted, but finally she grew calmer, used the relaxation techniques Grandpa Monkey had taught her. And she listened. Almost, there was nothing-only the very vaguest chittering at the edge of perception. She pushed her mind out with everything she had. Nothing. She found two more tubes next to the air tube. One provided for water; the other, some sort of tasteless paste. So they weren't trying to starve her. She tried to reach out again. If only she could find another mind, one that stood beneath the Sun, one that had some grasp on the passage of time-but there was nothing. It had been a faint hope, at best-without line of sight she could have contacted only a teep as powerful as herself. She passed the time doing multiplication tables, telling herself stories, remembering the hundred landscapes of her life-the 138 rocky hills of Andorra; the cold green beauty of Alaska; the bustling madness of Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Mexico City; a quiet, still night on the waters of Tasik Chini ... It all ended, eventually, with her pounding at the walls, screaming just to hear something. Of all the places she had ever lived, none of them had ever been silent, both to the ear and the mind. She awoke violently. Someone had been talking to her, hadn't they? Telling her something. There was a lingering feeling of comfort, of happiness, that tasted somehow plastic. Fiona. It was a strong, clear voice. She grasped at it, ran toward it. It was everything. Fiona, 1 can save you. But you have to do what 1 say. Please, get me out of here. 1 will. But first you have to do something for me. You have to promise you're going to be a good girl. I promise! There was a brief pause. (skepticism, biting hard) 1 don't believe you. You shouldn't lie to me, Fiona. I'll come back when you mean it. And the voice vanished as if it had never been. Hours, days, months, or years passed, she couldn't tell which. She clung to the hope that the voice would return. Just when she knew she was at the edge of madness, it did. Hello, Fiona. "Please don't go again. Please." Are you ready to he a good girl? I'll do anything you want. You've been involved with some very bad people. The man you called Grandpa Monkey Jack O'Hannlon-was a murderer. He raised you, so you can't be held responsible for your feelings toward him, for the crimes you yourself committed at his behest. 1 can wipe all of that clean. I want to be your friend, Fiona, truly 1 do, but you have to help me. How? You've seen things. You know things. These people are not your friends, Fiona. They are criminals and killers. They planted a bomb, Fiona, in Geneva. They killed a lot of people. Psi Corps, she answered. We bombed Psi Corps ... Images suddenly burst into her head. A girl of perhaps thirteen years, most of her face gone. An old man, moaning, reaching for something with a hand he no longer had. A cloud of pain, exquisite and complex. What do you imagine Psi Corps is, Fiona? They are the villains your brave, heroic underground murdered. Your own kind. People just like you, trying to find a safe place, a place where the normals won't hate them, fear them, kill them. And when they find that safe place, what happens? More murder, this time by their own kind That's what you've been a part of, Fiona. She didn't want the voice to go away. She didn't. She didn't like what it was saying, but it was far better than silence. She felt as if she were on the edge of a precipice with nothing, nothing at all below her. Only the voice kept her from plunging over. You lie, she said. You lie. Psi Corps is slavery. The scan hit her hard and fast, the most powerful, brutal attack she had ever experienced. For an instant she nearly surrendered, but Monkey had taught her well. She punched the invading mind back, first by inches, then by yards, threw up levees, dikes, and finally walls that enclosed her. Weeping, she touched the sky of her tiny world, trying to prove herself real, and almost failing. Her greatest fear was that soon she would fail. She slept again, and the voice came back. Her walls went up automatically , woke her. As soon as she dozed again, the voice came back. It went on, and on, until something in her exploded, leapt out of her, a whip, a blade, and she felt a terrible satisfaction at the cry of pain. For a time they left her alone again. And then-so faint she thought at first she was making it up- she heard another voice. When she understood it was real, she first thought it was another trick. But it was too weak, groping in the dark, as frightened as she. And it could not reach her without her help. Still suspicious, she ignored it as long as she could, then reached out again. Who are you? she asked. Who? Who? Are you an owl, then? (something like laughter) No. I'm a prisoner, like you. In a little box. I've been here- The voice weakened, fluttering in her mind like a candle in a draft. She nursed it, as she might a little flame. My name is Fiona. I'm Matt. Matthew. (pause) I think I'm losing my mind 1 think I'm making you up. Maybe I'm making you up. (pause) We have to resolve this, don't we? Matthew said. Tell me something I don't know. That would prove nothing. Descartes said- Please, no philosophy. That's the last thing we need, some dead Frenchman trying to convince us we aren't real. I think you may be another one of these Psi Corps goons. What do you think about that? 1 may be. Or we may be each other. Maybe we're both insane. All I know is, I feel better now. Me, too. I-Matthew? Matthew? But he was gone. Fiona? Where have you been? she angrily demanded. They tried to scan me. I think I passed out. You're even weaker than before. I'm okay. I'm just worried that they'll-they'll find out about us. You mean that wild night we had on the beach in Santa Cruz? (laughter) Hell, I'd like to know more about that. You picked me up at a party, she began. It was boring. The host had this ugly little dog he kept trying to make do tricks- -and we went to the carnival, and rode all of the rides, until we noticed a dwarf and a giant following us- -but we got awayfrom them, and when the chase was over, we were on the beach, and I was cold so you gave me your coat- It was sweater, actually. Then you told me how big and strong I was, and asked if I'd ever been swimming in the Pacific- Hey, hold it, buddy, Fiona said. I don't go that far on a first fantasy . Straighten up. Sorry. What if we just walk hand in hand and look for starfish? Better. Much better. Then we can go back to my place- And eat pizza. God, I could use a pizza. And a beer. The next day the other voice was back, but she shut it out. She no longer needed it as she had. What was more, she had no intention of opening even a crack for them to learn about Matthew. It was clear her captors had made some sort of mistake; they had taken pains to isolate her so that the only contact she had was with them. They had underestimated her, or Matthew, or both. "Come on," Matthew said. "I've got something to show you." They stood in darkness, a thin, cold wind whipping around them. "Where are we?" "Just wait." Over time, their illusions had gained clarity as each surrendered control to the other. It was not exactly like reality, or even like a dream, but like the sharpest of memories. They sat on a pinnacle of stone, and the sky gradually began to grey. A line appeared, f ar away, darkness separating from light, and then, with breathtaking suddenness, a thumbnail of brilliant orange appeared, and a plain of copper. She gasped with the intensity of it. "That's the Sulu Sea," he said, quietly. "See those dark places? The Philippines." "It's beautiful." "This is one of my favorite moments. I climbed up here in the dark. I almost got sick from the attitude, and I sat here, not believing it would be worth it. I almost went back down, while it was still night. Then this. . . " He trailed off as the liquid sun separated from the waters, and the whole world emerged in shades of gold. "Where are we?" "Mount Kinabalu, on Borneo. I wish I could see your face," he murmured. "Oh, if you could see it you might not say that," she said. "It's funny, isn't it? We carry such clear pictures of everything but ourselves ." His face, an indistinct oval, nevertheless seemed sad. "Wait," she said, and concentrated. She brought up the image of a model she had seen on the vids. in magazines. "Oh!" he said, and then, "No. That isn't you. Put her away. I can wait." "Wait? Wait for what?" she a
sked bitterly. "We'll meet," he said. "We'll meet, and I'll know you." "Sure," she murmured "Sure we will." She looked back out at the flaming waters. "Thanks. Thanks for showing me this." He nodded. "You're welcome, Fiona." She felt something like an arm going around her, and a flood of warmth, tenderness- And then searing light, so bright it was painful. She coughed back a shriek as Matthew and the Sulu Sea vanished, replaced by the hideous brilliance and the sudden clashing of metal. She shut her eyes, tightly. "Get her out," a voice--a real voice, made of quivering air- said. "Put her in compound five." She was out. Out of the box. They lifted her up, but her legs would not, of course, support her. Two men dragged her along, and still she could not open her eyes. Matthew? But he was gone, not even a whisper of him left.
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