Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  “That’s what Jule and Siebeling are trying to do,” I said; trying not to reach out to her mind, not to try to make her see. Knowing that that would be the worst thing I could do. “To teach psions how to control their own Gift. Like Siebeling did with me, and Jule. That’s how to stop them from getting into trouble. They’re not animals—”

  “If all psions were in complete control of their abilities, they would only be tempted to use them against others. Power is the strongest drug of all. You worked for that terrorist Quicksilver.” Parroting Stryger again, the memory burning in her eyes. “He would have crippled the FTA, and torn the entire Federation apart if he hadn’t been stopped—”

  “How do you think the FTA stopped him?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t know.

  “They used psions! Siebeling, Jule, me, a bunch of others. That’s when I met her. That’s what I was doing out there on Cinder, at the mines. Ask Jule—” She didn’t even know that. All she knew, all any of them still remembered, was that a psion terrorist had nearly brought down the Federation single-handed.

  “Quicksilver didn’t do it alone,” I said. “He wasn’t some kind of crazy god. He had plenty of combines backing him. Just like Stryger. But we still stopped him—Jule, and Siebeling, and me.” I held up my fist. “I killed Quicksilver myself. I felt him die inside me, and that’s why I can’t use my psi any more unless I’m so drugged up I can’t remember his pain.” I felt tears spill out of my eyes, so suddenly that I didn’t have a chance of stopping them. They burned my face like acid, like they hadn’t done in years, not since the moment after the killing when I’d realized what I’d done, to him, to myself. When I’d looked into my own mind and seen the nothing hole I’d made of somebody else with my telepathy and a gun: a wound bleeding hate and terror, a wound that would never heal. When I’d realized that I’d destroyed the Gift that had become my life. That I was back where I’d started, blind and alone and going nowhere.… I wiped at my face with my hand, choking on sobs … feeling nothing.

  Elnear was staring at me with a kind of horrified fascination, like someone watching a burnout scream curses on an Oldcity street-corner. If she’d had any doubts about whether freaks were all crazy, I’d just proved it was true.… She was backing toward the door. “I think,” she murmured, feeling for the plate on the wall, “that your work for the taMings is probably finished. You have certainly done enough already.” The anger and frustration were back in her voice: the door flicked open. “Under no circumstances are you to attend the party downstairs. My own Security people are here tonight. They will see that you are removed if you show yourself there.”

  She left the room. The door sealed shut behind her, and I was alone again. I sat down, facing out on the view of coming night, blind with tears. Pain like knives stabbed into the back of my eyes. I got up again and stumbled across the room, found the trash can I’d seen beside the desk and vomited into it. After that my head felt a little better; but the trembling in my hands went on for a long while.

  I lay back on the couch, feeling the skin on my face tighten as the tears dried, wondering what in hell was happening to me. Maybe I was sick, maybe I was tired … maybe it was starting. Symptoms: My mind eating away at my body because the drugs kept it from eating away at itself. It was sending me a warning, telling me to stop, for God’s sake—I touched the patch behind my ear. I’d just been fired, hadn’t I? My cover was gone, what was the point in wearing a patch any more, walking on broken legs.…

  I tried to make my fingers peel off the patch. What about Elnear? Somebody was still trying to kill her; that hadn’t changed. “Fuck her—” I said. But that didn’t do anything except make me feel lousier. I’d ruined her life. What did I expect her to do, thank me? Besides, it was Braedee who’d hired me, and he hadn’t fired me yet. Maybe I should wait. I needed the money. I needed.…

  I pulled my knees up, rested my head on a crust of pillows, feeling my anger slowly melt down into a puddle of envy. I listened with my mind to the rising murmur of mental noise, guests arriving, filling the levels of the townhouse below me.

  Elnear had said she hated parties, they were a waste of time. She was probably going to hate this one more than usual. But I’d felt her, somewhere in the back of her mind, remembering a time when she’d loved the music and the dancing, the company of the best of the best … when she’d been giddy with wine and laughter; when every word had sparkled like diamonds, when every sensation was a perfect counterpoint playing on all her senses at once; when she’d been in love.…

  I couldn’t help wondering what that would feel like, to have everything you ever wanted, even happiness. It hadn’t lasted for her—but what ever did? I’d thought at least I’d get to taste it for one night—But now any memories I’d have of tonight would have to be stolen ones.

  I let my psi slide into the white water of those hundreds of minds, all of them together but forever alone, even in a place like this I collided with random bits of image and emotion, collecting them: someone else’s eyes falling on a beautiful woman wearing a gown of jewels, the sudden taste of fresh kiskfruit rind dripping with chocolate, the smell of roses and imported incense. Pulsing music, pungent disgust, hot hunger as someone’s blood-red nails traced a slow line down someone’s/my backbone. It was all so easy, they were all so blind.… I lost myself inside their pleasure, sinking deeper into fantasies, letting myself be rich and famous, fire and ice … a psion.

  I sat up on the couch, jerked out of my peepshow dreams as my mind wandered in through the wrong open door. But I’d been loose and careless, not trying to guard my own thoughts, knowing none of those deadheads would ever know the difference. Except this one wasn’t a deadhead. It had been a man—that was all I knew for sure before he knew, and cut me off in sudden panic. I lunged after him, let my mind fall like a net over the sea of stars-in-darkness that was the party down below. But he was gone, losing himself in the void that kept those stars separate forever. He wasn’t very good—but neither was I, and one thing he knew how to do was hide.

  I gave up the hunt after a while, leaning back as I sank into playing voyeur again. I was better at that, and Braedee didn’t want me digging up family secrets anyway.… The odor of warm flesh and perfume; the electric shock of sudden humiliation; braying laughter; synth music.…

  The door opened.

  I sat up fast; afraid it was Elnear who’d come back and caught me jerking off my brain. But it was Daric instead. He spasmed with surprise, as if the last thing in the world he’d expected to see here was another human being … or me. He laughed; it cut off like a stick snapping. “Well, hello.” He came on into the room, every movement full of angular momentum. “So this is where she’s exiled you to.… The Cat’s out of the bag, so I hear.” He raised his eyebrows, smirking at some joke I didn’t get. “Now everybody knows your secret. You won’t be safe anywhere. You’re a marked man, to the hypers … you’re famous. Poor Auntie’s ready to make violin strings out of your guts.”

  I sat forward, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes as my head started to throb again.

  “I don’t mean to intrude. I can tell you must be having a marvelous time, hiding out up here all alone while the party of the century goes on without you, just out of reach downstairs.” I heard him pass close by me as he crossed the room. “Hasn’t she even brought you up a cup of lukewarm tea and a handful of crumbs? Thoughtless—but then, she’s having such a wonderful time, herself.…”

  “Jeezu!” I said. “You’re really an asshole.” I raised my head.

  He turned back, staring at me, but not really seeing me. “You’re right.…” There was surprise on his face now, like he was seeing himself for the first time in a mirror. “You’re very perceptive about human nature. But then I suppose all telepaths are.” His mouth slid into another mocking smile.

  I swore and stood up, sick of being one of his sick jokes. I started for the door, not knowing where I was going, but only that I had to get away
from this.

  “Cat, wait—”

  I stopped, turned around.

  He was wearing the best imitation of a real face that I’d ever seen on him. He bent his head to one side. “Listen, I am sorry. I have made an ass of myself. You’re absolutely right. And absolutely honest, which is more than I can say for anyone else around here, including myself.” He lifted his hands in a shrug. “Don’t go. How about a truce? I won’t make fun of you, if you promise not to tell the truth.”

  I felt my face tighten, waiting for the next slap. I didn’t say anything.

  But he only turned back to what he was doing, which was putting his hand through what looked like a solid sculpture hanging on the wall. His arm disappeared up to his elbow, came out again holding a small ceramic box. He set the box down on the desk. “My drugs,” he said. He pulled it open with a kid’s guilty grin; showing off, waiting for my reaction. When I still didn’t say anything, he took out plastic sheets covered with colored dots and began to peel them off one at a time. He decorated his forehead with blues and greens; stuck on a double line of golds and reds around his throat inside the open collar of his neat gray tunic; shoved a purple one down the front of his pants. “Ahh, that’s better.”

  “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing,” I said finally. “Because I’m not going to scrape you off the floor when you overdose.”

  He snorted. “Of course I do.… How about you? I hear you’re an experienced drug abuser from way back. Help yourself.” He waved me toward the half-empty sheets.

  I shook my head. “I don’t use, any more.” There was a time when I’d tried anything anybody’d sell me, trying to find the one that could fill the empty place where something nameless had been torn loose inside me; the one that could take away the pain of living through another day on the streets. I was lucky I was still alive. I didn’t need drugs, any more.… Suddenly my hand wanted to reach up behind my ear, to feel the patch, to rip it off. Or maybe to make sure it was still in place. I kept my arm down at my side.

  Daric looked at me, half puzzled, half frowning. I tried to make myself find out what was going on in his mind. I got the usual stench of mockery and black humor; under it the electric song of barely controlled tension, aimless strands of disgust and loathing.… His mind was like a jungle, the drugs filling it in with impenetrable vines of random sensation as they opened up all his senses. I couldn’t get any further, pushing against the limits of my crippled psi.

  Daric sighed, a smile of pure pleasure stretching his face out like a piece of plastic. “Much better.” He looked like someone who’d just had a knife blade moved away from his throat; I could almost feel him relaxing. No wonder he liked drugs. I watched him shove the box back through the sculpture into its hiding place. “I have no intention of staying around here for more of the overdressed dog and pony show downstairs. Trust me, you’re really not missing a thing. A vicious, meaningless, and ultimately boring game of Beasts and Victims, that’s all it is. I’m having my own private party, down at Purgatory. Argentyne has created a new work, just for tonight. I’m going there now. All my favorite people are going to be there.… Do you want to come?” His eyes brightened with sudden eagerness. “Come with me. You’ll be a sensation!”

  I blinked, stared, not really believing I’d heard him ask. I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why not? Are you afraid the hypers will eat you alive? No one will even know we’re gone. You’ll be safe.”

  I thought about it, hit with a sudden rush of excitement as I imagined getting free of this prison, feeling alive and real, for even one night—“I … I’m supposed to stay here. I’ve got to do my job. Braedee—”

  “Braedee?” He laughed. “Do you really think Braedee cares what you do now? Do you really think Elnear does?… Do you actually believe someone is going to murder her in the middle of this crowd? Besides, everyone here has been scanned right down to their entrails for weapons.” He strolled toward me, reached out to jog my arm. “They don’t need you,” he said gently. “Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.”

  I jerked away from his hand.

  He shrugged. Irritation showed in his eyes, was gone again. “Do what you like. Sit here and sulk. Pretend you matter.” He turned away, starting for the door. “You had your chance.…”

  “All right. I’ll come.”

  He turned back, grinning. “I promise you a night you’ll never forget.… You sure you don’t want any drugs?”

  “No thanks,” I said. I’ve got all I need.

  TWELVE

  I FOLLOWED DARIC out of the room, through a maze of empty back hallways, down a lift that only servants used … slipping past doorways that opened onto a wall of light/noise/motion, into darkness/silence again. I could feel him still grinning up ahead of me, lighting up my brain with his pleasure buzz, counterpointing the dry empty throbbing in my own head. We came out at last in some kind of subbasement garage, where half a dozen private mods sat waiting for people who needed a quick escape.

  As we stepped out of the lift into the shadowed underworld, someone materialized from behind a pillar. I swore, jerking up short.

  But Daric only laughed, and pulled me forward. “Jiro!” he called. “Good boy, you escaped them. Look who I’ve found to join us.”

  Jiro stepped out into the light. His hair was still wild, and half his face was streaked with blood-colored paint. He was wearing a brocade jacket with one sleeve missing, over a torn shirt over a striped ankle-length tunic. It took me a minute to realize he hadn’t been in some kind of accident. His ear-to-ear smile fell away as he saw me. The static of his excitement faded, broken by the sudden blankness of uncertainty, sharp pangs of doubt and curiosity. He knew, just like everybody else did now. “Cat.…” His shoulders twitched. “Are you … I mean, are you really a freak? Are you … you know … reading my mind all the time?” His eyes were bright and dark, the whites showing.

  “He knows our every secret, don’t you, Cat?” Daric murmured.

  “No,” I said, as evenly as I could. “I’m not a freak. I’m a psion. And no,” I said again, ignoring Daric’s laugh, “I’m not reading your mind all the time. You’re not that interesting.” Jiro frowned. Daric’s laughter goaded me out into the open space. Jiro skittered backwards as I passed him, came forward again, almost treading on my heels as he tried to prove something to himself. Somehow the space inside the mod seemed cramped, like there were two of me sitting side by side.

  * * *

  The mod delivered us right to the door of Purgatory, Argentyne’s private club; what I saw of the Deep End around it made me damn glad of that. We climbed out into the glare of a hundred different hologos dancing in the darkness overhead, stepped over a burnout sprawled in the gutter. Jiro coughed from the stink of a garbage fire somewhere down the block. A gang of street slugs done in gold teeth and threedy paint gave us the eye as they pounded past. The one thing I hadn’t been expecting to see was the way the city’s sealed dome arced down into the bay, creating more breathing space, reclaiming the bottom of the sea. Argentyne’s club was just offshore—the black wall of water rose halfway up the dome here, drowning the stars in half the night’s sky.

  I don’t know what I’d thought a place run by Daric taMing’s lover would look like. On the outside it didn’t look like much: An ancient cement-block warehouse, with the word “Purgatory” holoed in red crawling endlessly over its face like a blind worm. Daric strode across the dirt-blackened bricks of the pavement as if he owned this part of town, and went down the shallow stairwell to the club’s entrance. He touched something on the rusted iron door that sent out a silent call. I followed after him, staying close to Jiro, who was sparking with his own nervous energy. He was so high on excitement that I almost thought he’d been taking drugs; but his mind was clear when I checked him. At least Daric hadn’t made his stepbrother the same offer he’d made me. I knew Jiro liked Argentyne, but I was surprised Daric would bring a kid
like him to the Deep End. Argentyne was a symb-player; like magicians, they worked your head best if they did it live. But Jiro had said she was famous. She must do gigs in bigger and better places than this.

  The graffiti-covered door cracked open, swung wide as whoever was behind it recognized Daric. Cinnamon smoke and screaming laughter reached out and dragged us inside.

  “Welcome to Purgatory!” A face, or a mask, pushed into mine—I couldn’t tell which from the leering smile. Young or old, male or female … somewhere inside all that I found a man’s mind, or thought I did. “Not quite heaven, not quite hell.…” His breath stank from skagweed. His hand grabbed my wrist, inside a swirl of translucent glitter cloth, yellows and golds, and he hauled me forward, shooing Jiro ahead down the hallway. “Your first time, pretty?” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, or Jiro, or both of us. If Argentyne wanted to keep out anybody who didn’t have a sense of humor, she was doing a good job.

  We half stumbled, half slid down a dark ramp. It dumped us out into the middle of a madhouse. I stopped, staring. Daric was already wading through the crowd, shouting and waving his arms; the crowd parted around him like a sentient sea, and voices called his name.

  I stood at the bottom of the ramp, weaving my mind into a fist in self-defense as Jiro plunged out into the shifting mass of bodies after Daric. Still just trying to take it all in—the vast, scarred womb that was the club’s interior, the glaring, pounding music that filled it like an invisible force, trying to split open its walls … the people. They looked like they’d been bodysnatched and dropped down here from every age, every world, every imaginable level of human life. They wore lace and brocade, leather and rags, grafts, jewels, chains and batteries, plastic, hair, skins and bones. I felt like a mark, still wearing combine colors. Daric’s ultraconservative suit looked so wrong that it actually made him seem to belong here. Some of the guests hugged him, kissed him, groped him. I began to spot a few that weren’t natives—bored vips escaping like he was from their own respectability, trying too hard to seem like they fit in. I could spot that kind in my sleep.