Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  The interior of the Crystal Palace had been one huge open space, once; I wondered what it had been used for then. The taMings had broken it up into rooms and levels, like a glass beehive. The walls, the ceilings, the floors were transparent, but polarized, so they could be made opaque in changing patterns.

  “This is the original family residence that Estevan taMing had brought here after he returned to Earth. He started Centauri Transport and made his fortune out in the Centauri system.” Elnear was still giving me the guided tour, reading the questions in my eyes. “My brother-in-law … Jule’s father lives here now. After so many generations in one home, sometimes you get tired of seeing the same four walls.” She glanced away; you could see the river, through half a dozen perfectly clear panels.

  “Why not just move?” I asked, and felt like a fool as soon as I’d said it.

  “Tradition,” she said softly. “They are a very stubborn family. They don’t like to let things go.”

  I didn’t say anything, thinking about Jule. We were closing now with the hot cluster of minds that I’d picked up as we entered. Elnear had told me there’d be more taMings than usual tonight, because Centauri was having its quarterly board meeting right now. The floating butler that had led us through this maze of mirrors disappeared suddenly through the doorway in a wall opaqued to a pearl-gray.

  The butler chimed as we entered the room, and then began to drift away. “Thank you,” Elnear said, even though it was nothing but a machine. There were twenty or thirty people there already. Heads began to turn as the three of us stopped in the doorway. I felt Elnear clench up inside, like someone about to dive into cold water.

  “Auntie! Auntie!” A shrill child’s voice cut like a drill through the polite mumble of adult voices talking treaties and voting and forced merger. A little girl with long black hair pushed through the legs of the crowd and came bolting across the room. She collided with Elnear like a heat-seeking projectile, and hung on her tunic skirt, squealing with delight.

  “Talitha.” Elnear smiled, the smile that could change everything, stroking the dark hair as the little girl beamed up at her. “How’s my favorite girl?”

  “I have new shoes,” Talitha said. “See?” She stuck out her foot, which was covered with something that looked like a large, hairy bug wearing a red hat.

  “Lovely,” Elnear said. “Just the thing! Show them to Philipa.”

  Talitha hopped around her, one foot still up in the air, until she saw me. She froze, staring, then buried her face in Elnear’s tunic. One clear gray eye showed again after a minute, and then the other. “Talitha. This is my new aide.” Elnear patted her shoulder. “His name is Cat.”

  She looked up at me from under her shining black bangs. “I have two cats,” she said. “Their names are Blunder and Calamity. I’m four.” She held up the right number of fingers.

  “Nice names,” I said. Suddenly I was remembering Jule again, seeing her face in Talitha’s, just the way she must have looked when she was small. She’d probably never even seen Talitha. “You remind me of your cousin Jule.”

  A frown wrinkled up her nose. “We don’t talk about Jule,” she whispered, and pressed her finger against her mouth. “She’s bad.”

  I looked at Elnear.

  “No. treasure, she isn’t bad,” Elnear said gently, not looking at me. “She was just … unhappy. But now she’s better.”

  “Daric says she’s bad—”

  “Talitha!” This time it was a boy’s voice calling. I glanced up and saw him coming toward us. He looked about eleven, with the same shining black hair and gray, upslanting eyes. “Oh, hi, Auntie.” He stopped next to her, kissed her cheek as she hugged him with her free arm. “Mother said you weren’t coming tonight. I was so bored I thought I was falling into a black hole. Can we sleep at your house? I hate it here.” His voice turned sullen as he looked over his shoulder at someone.

  “We’ll see,” Elnear said. “I’ll ask your mother.” He grinned again, abruptly. She turned him to face me. “This is Cat. Say hello.”

  “Really?” He stared me up and down, his eyes wide. “That’s your name? Wow, your hair is terminal!”

  “My thought exactly,” Jardan murmured.

  “Will you show me how to do mine? How old are you? Are you Auntie’s lover?”

  “Jiro—!” Elnear’s hand flew up like it wanted to clamp over his mouth; fluttered in the air, dropped to her side again. “Cat is my new aide.”

  “Oh well.” He shrugged. “You have to fix my hair,” he said, looking at me, “you promised. Come on, Talitha. Let’s find Mother. You want to stay at Auntie’s, don’t you—?” He hauled his sister away, squawking.

  “You should have boxed his ears,” Jardan said, when he was safely out of range.

  Elnear smoothed her skirts. “Well. It’s not easy to be young here. Or old.…” She glanced at me, finally, almost sheepishly. “You’ve just met the new generation of taMing empire-builders. You may as well meet the rest.”

  I followed her on into the shifting dance of the crowd, into the bodies in orbit around the long table covered with food and drinks. Too many of them, too much alike. Parents and children, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, at least six generations of them—but none of them, even the oldest, looked any older than Elnear. Even the ones who didn’t look like taMings were all too beautiful, and they all wore perfect clothes and jewels that made my head swim, and murmured things I didn’t understand and thought things I didn’t want to hear.…

  And all of them were alive, too real, thinking, feeling … not just around me any more but inside me, angry mocking tense bored smug afraid. I’d forgotten what it was like to be open all the time; forgotten how to really control it. It was like being thrown headfirst into a mob after three years in solitary. My nerves were closing in on burnout fast.

  I reached up when no one was watching and picked off the patch behind my ear, dropping it on the floor. Then all I could do was hang on until the drugged nerve centers half asleep in my mind woke up again: until the black ache that was pain without a name came crawling back; until my crippled psi response went fetal, smothering the fire of too many other minds inside me.… I went on, trailing Elnear through more meaningless head-on collisions like a dazed deafmute. No one seemed to notice, or care, not even her. She was only using me as a crutch; I was something to say, to people she had nothing to say to.

  Until we came face to face with still another taMing, a handsome man in a silver-threaded evening coat, wearing a ruby button as big as an eye. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties, but he couldn’t be: he was Jule’s father.

  “Gentleman Charon taMing, Cat,” she said. “This is my new aide—”

  “Yes,” Jule’s father said. I looked back at him, surprised. “I already know about him.” He did know: he knew what I really was. Jule’s freak. He was the head of Centauri’s board; the one who’d had me hired. “Just do as you’re told, and don’t do anything else, and you’ll get along fine, boy,” he said, with a smile that never touched the words.

  I looked away, my hands clenching over the loose cuffs of my jacket. Somehow, somewhere, there had to be a way out of this place.…

  “You understand me—?” When I didn’t answer something brushed my shoulder, just hard enough to seem casual. His hand. But it wasn’t a hand; it only looked like one, wrapped in a skin glove. It was almost pure augmentation, and he didn’t just use it to direct-access. I jerked as the pressure of his grip hurt me without seeming to.

  “Yes. Sir.” I had a hard time getting it out. I rubbed my shoulder. “You’re just like she described you. Sir.”

  “Who?” His glance darted at Elnear.

  “Jule.”

  Eyes on me again. This time I didn’t look down. His face darkened. But then he turned and walked away without saying anything more.

  “Don’t try those games with him,” Jardan said to me. “You’ll lose.”

  “What games?” I asked, because I hadn’t be
en playing one.

  “Don’t try them on me, either,” she snapped. Elnear only looked at me, her mind telling me something I didn’t want to hear.

  I turned around, bumping into the table heaped with strange food, spilling a crystal glass full of wine on my pants. I swore, and somebody frowned, and somebody else laughed. I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, wasn’t happening, that I really wanted something to eat. I’d never seen so much food in my life, and none of it was anything I recognized.

  I reached out for something, blindly. Behind me I heard Jardan mutter, “Pig.” And the table might as well have been piled with garbage; suddenly the sight and smell of everything on it made me sick. I backed away again. At least the other guests looked like they were losing interest in eating. I told myself it would be over soon—

  A butler chimed again, somewhere across the room. “At last!” Elnear murmured, as if it meant something she’d actually been looking forward to. “Dinner.”

  I opened my mouth; closed it again, as the crowd sucked us away.

  Elnear looked at me, curious. “You look like you expect to be the main course,” she whispered. “Cheer up! The food is actually quite good.”

  I grimaced, hoping it looked like a smile.

  “Auntie—!” Jiro and Talitha were back, dragging a tall black-haired woman after them.

  Jule. I almost said it out loud; stopped myself. It wasn’t Jule’s mind when I found it; not even her face, when I saw it clearly. This woman was more beautiful; only hers was a soft, spoiled kind of beauty, not the strong clean lines of Jule’s face and body. She looked like she’d never even thought about the kind of pain Jule had always known. But still the resemblance was so strong it made my throat tighten.

  “Mother says we can stay with you!” Jiro was shouting triumphantly. “It’s all set!”

  Charon taMing came drifting up behind them, his eyes on the woman’s back, a half frown pulling his lips down.

  The woman made a quick hidden gesture with her hands, asking Elnear a question. Oldcity had its handcodes too, but this wasn’t one of them, and I couldn’t read it.

  Elnear smiled at the children, half doting, half amused. “Of course,” she murmured to the woman. “You know you’re always welcome, Lazuli.”

  “This is my mother,” Talitha said, looking at me suddenly, hanging on Lazuli’s arm.

  Still staring at her mother, I managed to nod.

  “We’re going to have a baby brother!” Talitha sang. “He’s going to look just like me.”

  I glanced at Lazuli’s body without even thinking. She was wearing a clinging bodywrap that glowed like moonstones, and she sure as hell didn’t look like she was expecting a baby any time soon.

  Her glance followed mine downward. She smiled. “It’s in vitro. No one bothers with that any more.…”

  I looked away again, in a hurry. Charon taMing’s eyes were on me, his frown deepening. I glanced away from him, too, not knowing whether it was even safe to look at anybody.

  “I mean pregnancy, of course.” Lazuli laughed, like music, and I couldn’t help turning back to her.

  “Not sex,” Jiro said helpfully. “Mother likes sex. Do you?”

  “Jiro!” she murmured, going pale when I expected to see her blush. “What am I going to do with you—?”

  “Get him a girlfriend,” I muttered, and Jardan jerked me away from them like I had a disease.

  As I turned, I saw Charon catch hold of the boy’s arm with that hand, and squeeze it hard. Jiro bit his lip, but he didn’t make any sound. I looked away again.

  Someone was watching us, his mouth curved up in a half-smile. Jule’s brother, Daric. He’d just come in. In a crowd of rich-colored party clothes, he was the only one still wearing basic business drab. There was somebody with him, a woman—his woman, from the way he held onto her. My eyes stopped dead in their tracks when they got to her. If the way he was dressed made everyone else in the room look like tomorrow, she made them look like yesterday.

  She was an exotic: she’d had things done to her body that were meant to make people look at her and see something new. Her skin was silver, gleaming in the light. Her hair was a silver-white shock-wave cresting over her copper-colored eyes, spilling down her back. Even her fingernails were silver. She was wearing a holo, the abstract forms and colors flowing around her, always almost letting you see too much flesh but never doing it.… She moved with a kind of easy laughter playing around her like the colors, as if upstaging everyone in the room, making them murmur about her, blush, swear, gossip in handsign, was exactly what she wanted out of life. I wondered what she was doing here, with somebody who looked like him.

  “Jeezu, ain’t that a piece and a half.…” I said, and then realized I’d said it out loud as Lady Elnear turned back and gave me a look. I felt the tension-coil inside me wind one twist tighter; realizing suddenly that I couldn’t afford to stop thinking about anything I did or even said around these people, not for one second.

  “Her name is Argentyne,” Elnear murmured, not having to ask what I meant. “Daric’s … companion. She’s an entertainer—a symbplayer, I believe.” Even in her voice there was more fascination than disapproval.

  I pulled my eyes away from Argentyne, looked at Daric again. He was still watching us back, measuring our reactions with that smile on his face. He raised his eyebrows as he looked at me. I looked down, and away.

  Before I had the chance to ask any dumb questions they were gone, and the table was in front of me. I sat down. Jardan flanked me on my left, Elnear on my right. There was already food steaming under a clear dome on the plate, and what looked like bread and fruit and tofu on smaller plates, like planets circling a sun. I reached out, toward something familiar.

  “Don’t touch that!” Jardan hissed.

  I pulled my hand back. No one else was eating. They were all looking toward the head of the table, where Gentleman Teodor, the oldest active board member, was sitting. He didn’t look more than fifty; he was four times that old. Watching the way he moved, the slowness, you could tell. They could set back the body’s cellular clocks, but they couldn’t fool time forever. Not yet, anyway. He went through some hand ritual, and everyone around me responded. Then, finally, he reached for the food, and so did everyone else.

  I flipped the steam-clouded lid off my dish. I jerked back; the chair I was sitting in skreeked on the floor. There was something dead on my plate. Its glazed silver eye stared up at me from a bed of different-colored lumps glistening with sauce. The sauce looked like it had rat turds in it.

  “What is the matter with you?” Jardan murmured.

  “It’s dead.” I looked at her plate. There was another dead thing on that one.

  “I assume you’d prefer to eat it alive,” she said, dripping venom. She picked up one of the dozen silver utensils in front of her and dug a piece of flesh out of it. She put it into her mouth and began to chew.

  “You’ve never eaten fresh fish?” Elnear’s voice made me turn back.

  “Sure:’ I said, half frowning. This wasn’t it.

  “I mean freshly raised fish.” She nodded at her own plate. “It tastes much better than cloned. Try it.”

  I looked at the fish, and the utensils laid out between my own dishes like dissecting tools. There weren’t any chopsticks, so I picked up a fork.

  “No,” Jardan whispered. “Start from the outside.” She pointed at a different fork.

  I dropped the one I was holding. It clattered across my plate. I picked up another one, and dug into the fish near the tail. I ate a bite, trying not to gag.

  Elnear had it right; the food was incredible. I looked up at her, wanting to tell her so, but she was already talking to someone else. I went back to my eating. When I picked up the fishhead Jardan knocked it out of my hand. I realized then that a lot of people were staring at me … realized that my mind had quietly gone dead while I was eating, and I hadn’t noticed. Jule’s brother was sitting almost across from me, still wearing th
at same half-smile. He was younger than Jule, which meant he couldn’t be a whole lot older than I was; but somehow he looked twice his own age—or half of it. He had the same night-black hair, the same eyes … but if I hadn’t known he was her brother, there was nothing about him that would have made me believe it.

  I looked away from him, feeling my face flush again. Argentyne was next to him, and she laughed as he kissed her throat and whispered something in her ear, probably about me. She winked at me as she saw me staring at her. I looked away from her too, wishing I was dead. Trying to ignore their eyes and everyone else’s, I reached out for a pitcher to refill my glass.

  And then it happened. As I picked up the pitcher, something invisible took hold of it, trying to pry it out of my hands. My brain countered instinctively; my fist tightened again before a drop spilled. I pulled the pitcher toward me slowly, watching my hand every millimeter of the way. I kept my free hand tight around my glass as I refilled it, and set the pitcher back where it belonged. I raised the crystal glass to my mouth—and it happened again. The glass jerked; my hand spasmed. I almost snapped the fragile stem in half as I choked, and drops of clear red splattered onto my jacket. I gulped the wine down in three swallows, and set the glass on the table. And then I sat with my hands knotted into fists below the table edge.

  Someone had used psi on me … someone in this room. My eyes tracked face after face along the table, but every face was the same, a mask I couldn’t read. I swore under my breath. I’d thrown away that patch, figuring it was safe, that there was no one here Elnear had to worry about … when I should have been worrying about my own skin. These people might seem like nothing more than a bizarre family of clone-faced eccentrics, but some of the most powerful and ruthless vips in the Federation were sitting right at this table with me. They were Centauri Transport—and now I belonged to them. This was the peak of the pyramid that had crushed me all my life … and if I ever forgot it again, it could be the last mistake I ever made. Because one of them was a psion, too.