Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  The food came, laid out like it belonged in an art gallery. I hated to touch anything on the perfectly designed plate, but I was too hungry to let it stop me for long. It tasted better than it looked. I sighed, looking out at the view, as pastry shaped like flowers dissolved in my mouth. Thinking that I could get used to this … I glanced back at Elnear.

  She was staring at me, the way she’d look at something she was thinking of making into a painting.

  “Ma’am—?” I said, suddenly aware of every square centimeter of my body; wondering if I’d made an ass of myself somehow. I’d thought Jardan had driven enough basic protocol into my brain to at least let me eat in public.

  But she said, “It was no exaggeration to call you a hero for what you did last night. Or to call what you did for the Federation on Cinder an act of heroism … what all of you did there, but especially you. You deserve—”

  I glanced away. “No, it wasn’t,” I said, cutting her off.

  “What would you call it, then?” she asked.

  “Survival,” I said. “I did what I had to, to survive. I killed Quicksilver because he was going to kill us. I didn’t have a choice. There was nothing heroic about it.” Nothing at all. I frowned, looking down, seeing my reflection trapped in the tabletop.

  “How did you become a part of the undercover operation that stopped him?” She hadn’t even known that Jule had been a part of it, until yesterday; hadn’t believed it, until today.… But by now everyone’s blind ignorance was beginning to make sense to me. What we’d done on Cinder had almost cost Centauri everything—and one of us had been one of their own. They must have done all they could to suppress or distort the news about it; and they weren’t the only ones involved. Maybe it wasn’t so insane that even Shander Mandragora hadn’t heard the real story.

  I looked back at Elnear. There was nothing but respect, honest curiosity. behind her question. I laughed, and shook my head. “How—? The hard way, just like everything else I ever did back in Oldcity. I got away from a press gang, and the District Corpses picked me up for making fools of the Labor Crows. They tested me for psi—they were testing everybody they hauled in, because the FTA was looking for psions. Psions are all criminals, right; how else would you find one—?” I smiled, and she looked down. “That’s when I met Jule; she was in the group too. Siebeling was in charge of it. He’d set it up like a kind of therapy group, an excuse to teach us all how to use our Gift, and have the FTA pay for it. The FTA hoped we’d attract Ruhiy—”

  “Rubiy?”

  “Quicksilver … his name was Rubiy. He had a name,” I said, not sure why it bothered me that nobody remembered that. “They knew he’d be looking for recruits. They couldn’t get at him any other way, and they figured, no big loss if he found out the truth and killed a few freaks.…”

  She blinked. “A catspaw,” she murmured.

  “A what?”

  “A ‘catspaw’ is someone used by someone else to do a job that is unpleasant or dangerous.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “That fits. It worked, too. Rubiy picked four of us, sent us to work with his people on Cinder who were trying to break the Mines’ security.”

  She glanced away, confusion starting in her thoughts. “If you were working undercover for the FTA, then why—?” Remembering my scars.

  I touched my back, my mouth twisting. “Like I said, the truth’s never that simple. Siebeling and me … we didn’t get along too well at first. He threw me out of the group, sent me back to Contract Labor. But when Rubiy found out, he used it—he got me sent to the Mines. I was his inside man.” The world faded into white, into the memories of what I’d seen there, and what had been done to me … the times when I’d wanted Rubiy to succeed. He’d even counted on that. “Rubiy would have given me anything I wanted if I’d given him the Mines.” He’d trusted me, because he thought we were the same—dead inside. There were times when I’d nearly believed that myself.

  But he was wrong. I blinked, my eyes smarting with the burn of memory.

  “Why didn’t you?” Elnear said, her gaze steady now.

  I looked down. The plate of half-eaten food in front of me seemed like an hallucination. I shook my head. “Because of Jule. She taught me some things Siebeling didn’t know how to. That I was still … alive. That I could still care about someone else.” I kept looking down. “I guess she taught both of us that. I wonder how she knew so much about it?”

  Elnear didn’t say anything.

  “Why did you marry a taMing, anyway?” I asked it, finally. “Why did you let them get such a hold on you? Did they make you do it?”

  She looked back at me, half smiled as she realized that I was only doing what she’d just done. “Oh, no,” she said. “I wasn’t forced into anything. I married Kelwin because I wanted to, and he wanted me to. I was much younger, then.…” Meaning not just in years. “I loved him very much. What more did I need to know—?” She’d thought that she had protected her interests. She’d thought that he would live forever.

  “How did he die?”

  “He was away on Centauri business, on Dandrosa, when it happened. There was a massive intrasystem failure.… The details don’t matter. They found evidence of sabotage.” She looked away, her folded hands tightening on the tabletop. “It was shortly after Jule’s mother died.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She had a drug problem.” Elnear was still looking somewhere else. “They said it was an accidental overdose. But ever since the family had learned that Jule was—was—” (defective), her mind said, helplessly, instinctively, “a psion, there had been suspicions, accusations of some sort of genetic tampering or falsification of hereditary charts.…”

  “You’re telling me you think the taMings killed her?” I remembered Lazuli not-quite-saying something about Jule’s mother, Charon’s first wife.

  Elnear shrugged. “Nothing was ever proved … in either case. Jule’s mother had ties to Triple Gee. The marriage was supposed to ease tensions; it involved the exchange of certain planetary interests in the same system where Kelwin died.”

  “So she was a hostage.” And maybe a saboteur.

  Elnear looked up again, almost startled. “Perhaps, in a sense.” Her eyes turned bleak. “But then, aren’t we all hostages to fortune…?”

  “So maybe your husband had to die because she did?” Maybe I didn’t want to get used to this life, after all.

  “Perhaps.” She got up, restlessly, as if part of her wished I’d leave it alone. But part of her wanted it, needed it.

  “How long ago?”

  “Sixteen years.” No hesitation. She could have told me how many months, days … seconds.

  “It should have been Charon.”

  She turned back, her hands clenched now. (It should have been Charon.) It had crystallized in her own mind at the same instant it had come out of my mouth.

  “No,” I said, to her half frown. “You didn’t think of it first.”

  She pressed her lips together, tried to wipe her eyes without me seeing her do it. She sat down again, her mind as open, as defenseless, as any human mind ever was. “All I’ve really wanted,” she said finally, so softly that the thought was almost louder, “for sixteen years, was to see it through.” Her work, her legacy, her life. Trying to hold on to what still had some meaning, trying to keep Centauri and the taMings from taking it all away from her: that had become her whole life, since she’d lost him. When she died they lost her holdings too because there were no children, and they knew it. No wonder she hadn’t been interested in setting back her clocks, once Kelwin was gone. But she wasn’t interested in being assassinated, either.… It had been easy to make her think someone wanted her dead, when you could never be sure anyone’s death was from natural causes.

  Her face changed, as she finally felt ready to hear whatever I wanted her to know: “What was it that you were going to tell me?”

  I glanced away, out over the glaciers of glass and stone, suddenly uneasy aga
in. Maybe this open terrace was really as shielded as the offices down below, but I couldn’t believe it. Braedee had said he’d leave me alone, but I knew how much that was worth. He didn’t want me telling Elnear the truth, and God only knew who else had what kind of long eyes watching.

  They said ignorance was bliss. The more I knew about this world, the more paranoid I felt. I couldn’t be sure of anything—except myself. (Lady,) I said, very gently again, mumbling something pointless out loud for any ears that were listening. (I have to be sure. Don’t fight me—) She sat frozen, her muscles rigid; only I could tell that inside her something was happening that no one else could see. When I was sure she was really ready, I reached out again, letting the message form as softly as snow. (Lady … no one was trying to kill you, before last night.)

  Her head jerked with surprise and confusion. I let the images implode as her incredulity crushed them; waiting until she could deal with what it meant to her. (I found out today from Charon. The same way you’re finding it out from me—) She kept blinking at me, like someone taking drugs. But she nodded, letting me know she understood, ready for what came next.

  (Centauri started it as a way to get at you, scare you, keep you under control.) I let her see how and why, using the images like an information feed. I began to get feedback as she realized it was the same kind of harassment she’d endured all along, only more vicious now. Centauri was trying harder to keep hold of her as she tried harder to get away. (They used me to spy for them, Lady, just like you thought … even to set you up for Stryger.) I winced at the stab of her betrayal. (A catspaw,) I thought, without meaning to. That’s what she’d called it; that’s what I’d been, again. (I didn’t know. They used me!) Letting my own anger batter hers back, tired of taking the blame. I’d been fucked over by Centauri too … and not for the first time. (Centauri was part of the conspiracy behind Rubiy that nearly got me killed. And they got away from it clean. If I hate the FTA for what happened to me out on Cinder, I hate Centauri worse—) I let her see it, let her see why, until she really believed that none of this had happened because I’d wanted it to.

  (But yesterday night—that changed things.) I showed her the rest of it. That now there really was a threat, and Centauri didn’t want her to die any more than she did. That even Charon thought I had a use now. That I wasn’t going to leave until it was over, and she was safe; until I’d made it up to her.

  She stared at me, not even blinking now, as if she was beyond anger, or surprise, almost beyond any emotion at all. “Thank you,” she murmured, finally, although that wasn’t what she wanted to say. Gratitude was the farthest thing from her mind after what she’d just learned … the way she’d learned it. And yet—

  She put her hand out blindly; needing real, solid, contact with another human … and there was no doubt left in her mind that I was as human as she was. There should have been a better way to put it, hut I couldn’t think of one, so I just gave up and took it the way she meant it. I got up from the table after a minute, looking back at her. My smile hardly pinched at all as I said, “Ma’am, right now I’ve got some—business I’ve got to work out. I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

  “What kind of business?” she asked, suddenly uncertain again.

  I shook my head. “Calling in some favors.”

  “This is going to help us find out what really happened last night?”

  “I hope so.… It’s better if you don’t ask,” I said, stopping her before she did. Her mouth pressed shut, her forehead wrinkled. She wished that I’d trust her, not really believing there were things she really wouldn’t want to know about me.

  I started to turn away, hesitated. “Lady, how much do you think Stryger really wants that Security Council slot?”

  She looked at me blankly for a minute. Then she started to frown, and shook her head. “You can’t imagine that he would try to have me killed.…” Incredulity that was almost laughter filled her voice.

  “Braedee doesn’t think that walking bomb was a hire job. I do. He can’t think of a combine that would do it for themselves, but he thinks they’re too proud to use the Lack Market. You know Stryger’s got combines behind him. They think he’s just another catspaw—but that’s not what Stryger thinks. He wants that slot for the same reason you do, to get himself free of them. He wants the power, real bad. I think he’d kill to get it.”

  She shook her head again, half smiling as she began to get up from her seat. “Cat, I understand why you feel this way. But I assure you, Sojourner Stryger may be too intense for his own good—he may even be something of a fanatic—but he is not an evil man.”

  “He lied, didn’t he? He smeared you, and me, right up there in front of God and everybody, to get what he wanted—”

  “He could have been sincere. He claims that he was misinformed.…”

  “Why are you defending him?” I said. She didn’t answer me. “Do you really still think he’s better than you?” My hands dropped to my sides. “Lady,” I said finally. “I met someone like that once. He picked me up on the street in Oldcity, bought me the first decent meal I’d had in about a week. And while I was eating, he was talking to me about how psions were evil and unnatural, because they had these abilities.…” Something that wasn’t really a laugh caught in my throat. I hadn’t known what he was talking about, why he was saying those things to me, staring into my green eyes with their long slit pupils.… “Then he took me up to a hired room and beat the crap out of me.”

  She sat down on the edge of the table, her mouth open, her mind groping. “Why?” she murmured at last, weakly. “Why didn’t you leave…?”

  “Because that’s what he was paying me for.” I left the restaurant.

  SEVENTEEN

  “WELL,” ARGENTYNE SAID, as she met me at the door, “somehow I didn’t expect to see you here again. At least not so soon.” Her silver eyebrows rose, asking silent questions, as she pulled the door to Purgatory open wider. “Don’t tell me you’re lonely.”

  She was still blocking the doorway with her body. I stood on the steps, suddenly feeling more self-conscious than I thought I knew how to. “I wish I was. Lonely, I mean.… Is Daric here?”

  She laughed, ruffling her hair. “Is it still daylight?” She glanced out, looking for sky. “He only comes out at night.”

  “That figures.” I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets.

  “You want to see him?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re not here to close me down, or you wouldn’t be here alone. So what can I do for you?” She yawned, the camph she’d been sucking on dangling from her fingers. I realized suddenly that she was yawning the way an animal yawned, instinctively showing teeth. Yawning because she was nervous, even a little afraid. Just like I was. It made her real, easier to look at without feeling my brain seize up.

  “I need directions.” I glanced over my shoulder at the street behind me. The water line was halfway up the dome, but there was still a wide stretch of sky visible. The map in my head had brought me this far, but it ended at the water line. “The map ends here.” And no map from the city files could tell me what I really needed to know, anyway.

  “You want to go off the Deep End?” She looked incredulous again. “Alone? Why?”

  Now that I really knew why they called it that, I wished I didn’t. “It’s not something I want to do. And it’s not something I want to talk about in the middle of the street.” I jerked my head at the swirl of bodies in random motion behind me.

  Argentyne stepped aside, opening the way for me into the club’s interior. “Sorry. I just got up. It always takes me a while to regain consciousness.” Her mouth curved in a wry smile. “It’s so early, you know.”

  I grinned, stepping inside. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Or I used to.”

  “You used to be a performer?” she asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “And then you got respectable.” She led me back along the hallway, down the ramp. She was wearing a
soft robe that looked like it had been made out of a bedspread; most of the color had faded out of it a long time ago. It was something she wore because she loved it a lot.

  I looked down at my neat, perfect, Centauri-branded clothes. “Not by choice,” I said.

  The club was nearly empty, gray with filtered daylight. A couple of indifferent floods lighted up the darker corners so the drones could finish their work, siphoning up the detritus of a hard night. The space and silence made it seem like a different building from the one I’d been in yesterday. Up on the stage a handful of bodies were clustered by a single bare table, sprawled across each other in the small island of cushions around it, looking like they’d had too much of something: I recognized the players of her symb. “Rehearsal,” she explained, nodding toward the stage. It felt more like a mass hangover to me.

  “That was really incredible last night,” I said, remembering the way their separate kinds of music had fused into a perfect web of sound, the mindwarping visuals that had come rippling out through the noise … suddenly remembering who she was again; suddenly feeling awkward and self-conscious again.

  She looked at me, about to toss off some remark about my own performance here. Seeing my face, she only said, “Glad you enjoyed it. Glad you enjoyed something about last night.” She glanced down, embarrassment and leftover anger at Daric blurring her memory, and we were back on the same ground again. “That wasn’t the usual crowd, last night,” she said. “That was a private party. I just wanted you to know.” That it wouldn’t happen again.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You like the muse, huh?” she asked, to fill up the silence. I nodded. “You sure you wouldn’t like to complete a circuit yourself?” She climbed onto the stage, reaching back to give me a hand. It wasn’t an offer she made often, or to just anybody. It was an apology; and something more.