Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  (You got a job you need done,) he thought, as if I hadn’t told him that before.

  I nodded.

  (Why don’t you do it yourself?)

  I touched my head. (Not wired.)

  He smiled that smirking joker’s smile again, as if he knew something the rest of the universe didn’t. But he only asked, (Why me? This?) Touching his own head. He’d thought nobody knew about his psi; he’d tried to keep it that way.

  (No.) I waved a hand at Mikah. (He says you’re the best. The only one can do it.)

  He looked down at his knitting again; needles clicked in the silence. Mikah rearranged himself restlessly on the couch, wishing he was somewhere else.

  (Can you do it? Crack that system?)

  Calm confidence seeped into my mind, all the answer Deadeye needed to make. Mikah hadn’t lied.

  (Will you?)

  (Why?)

  I felt my muscles start to tighten up again. (I said I can pay—)

  (Why—?) Not why should he. Why did I want it done—what did I want to know?

  I showed him. He hadn’t even heard about the human bomb. He took it all in, while I waited some more, counting my heartbeats.

  He looked up again at last. (Might be worth it.)

  I grinned, sitting back. (Where’s your ware? You got it in a separate room?) Looking around this room again, I noticed the heap of knitted things beside the door; but still not even enough tech to make a phone call. And there was no bioware hidden inside his skull. If he even had an access jack, I couldn’t feel it.

  He actually chuckled this time. It sounded like clearing phlegm. (Don’t need any.)

  Shit—I blocked it before he heard me. He was crazy, the old bastard. “Forget it—” I started to get up.

  (I don’t need any.) The image filled my head again; clear, hard, insistent.

  I stood looking down at him. “That’s impossible.”

  He shook his head. (That’s what they want us to believe.… That’s what they believe themselves. I stumbled over the truth. Probably others have.)

  (But you don’t pass it on.)

  (Why should I? What would it get me, except trouble?)

  I thought about it. He was right. (Why are you telling me?)

  (Because you understand what it means, to be a psion, and live by stealing.) He looked down again. (Because you’re good, and I might need your help.)

  (You mean you’d show me how? We’d do it together?) Excitement and fear collided inside me.

  (Maybe.) His good eye turned noncommittal. (How’s your memory?)

  (Perfect.)

  (Good.) He dropped his knitting over the side and stood up. (A lot to learn, first.) He trudged across the room to his console, and woke it up. For a minute I thought we were going to start in right there; but he was only calling up library files.

  “You ready?” Mikah asked, his voice sharp with uneasy impatience. Both of us jumped at the sound of it.

  “Almost.” I almost forgot to answer him out loud. I held up a hand.

  Deadeye turned back to me, handing over a headset. (Memorize these data. Teaches you as much as anything can about how a machine’s mind functions. It can save your life. Don’t come back unless you know it all. Then we’ll see.)

  I nodded, took the headset and pushed it into my pocket.

  (Bring that back. Only one I have.)

  I nodded again.

  He moved toward the door, suggesting with the motion that we should get out. He stopped suddenly as he reached the pile of clothes, and scooped up an armload. He went on out, carrying the heap with him into the darkness.

  When we reached the street he herded us through the door, and then he dropped the load of knitting onto the pavement beside the building.

  “He’s dumping that out?” Mikah asked, as if that only proved to him that Deadeye was out of his mind.

  Deadeye shrugged. (What about him?) he asked me, glaring at Mikah.

  (He’s my brother,) I said again.

  He went back inside without saying anything, and slammed the door. Mikah was still staring at the pile of clothes.

  “He doesn’t need them,” I said finally; explaining, because somehow I had to. “Somebody’ll come along who does.” Already it felt like having to put my thoughts into words before I could get them out was as hard as walking uphill.

  Mikah gave me a Look, and started to turn away. He turned back again, as curiosity tipped the scales on his irritation. Searching through the pile of knitted things, he found a long red scarf and wrapped it around his throat. I picked up the brown-green sweater that landed at my feet and pulled it on over my torn shirt. It felt good, heavy and warm. There was a dank chill to the air here. As we started away down the street, Mikah said, “That was the strangest fucking fifteen minutes I’ve spent since the day you disappeared on Cinder.” He made a small noise in the back of his throat; still trying to shake the feeling of being deaf and dumb, and invisible.

  “Could be worse.”

  He looked at me.

  “You could feel like that all the time.” I touched the patch behind my ear.

  He looked blank, for a minute. Then he asked, “How’s the stuff you got from DeAth doing for you?”

  “Doing its job,” I said. “Just fine.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t smile. “So what about your freakin’ cousin hack there—?” He flicked the end of the red scarf. “He gonna do the job after all?”

  “Think so.” I sighed, feeling a weight lift off me as I realized that I’d already done the hardest part of my work, just getting through to him. “I got to go back and see him again in a couple days.” I hesitated. “Keep it sealed that he’s a freak.”

  He nodded. “What was on that hairnet he handed you?”

  I felt in my pocket for the headset. “I can’t tell you.”

  He looked interested, but he only shrugged. “No problem.” On the streets half of what you knew was never more than a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, anyway. We went on to the Tube station, talking about the weather.

  “You going back to the club?” he asked, as we got on board together and the waiting transit sucked us away from the memory of Deadeye.

  “Not tonight.” Not sure when I was going to see Argentyne again, or what I’d say to her if I ever did, after what I’d said to her tonight.

  “Oh, yeah.” He smirked. “I forgot. You got one hot body waiting up for you.” His grin got wider as the trans sighed to a stop in the next station. “Me too. See you.” He flipped me a salute, and went away down the platform, whistling.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “AUNTIE’S SICK.” JIRO was sitting on the stairs as I came into the house, his face propped in his hands, his eyes shadowed, his thoughts dark.

  I stopped dead, pictures of poison or biocontamination strobing in my brain. “Where is she? In the hospital?” Elnear had looked all right when I’d left the office with her: tired and depressed, but that wasn’t surprising. I’d even watched her get into the secured private mod that would carry her straight here.

  He shook his head. “She’s just in her room. I guess she’s asleep. She fainted or something when she came home. Charon sent our meds to see her; they said it’s just because of all the—” He broke off. “What happened, I mean … you know. And because she’s old. They gave her some stuff. She has to rest.”

  I nodded, relieved. But if Elnear had been depressed before, this wasn’t going to make her feel any better. “Thanks,” I said, and started past him up the stairs. Stopped, looking back. “Is your mother here?”

  He twisted on the steps to look up at me. “Why?” he asked, a little too loudly.

  “Just wondered.” I shrugged, trying not to act like it mattered, and went on up to my room. I stood looking out the window, feeling tired, flexing my sore hand. Maybe tomorrow I’d get it treated somewhere, like Aspen had told me to. I still had trouble realizing that I had the credit to fix things I didn’t like. As I stood looking out into the darkness, it began to r
ain. It only rained at night here. The taMings always fixed the things they didn’t like.

  I heard Jiro come into the room behind me, like I’d known he would, sooner or later. The darkness behind his eyes hadn’t been because Elnear was sick, so it had to be something else. I turned away from the windows, went to the bed and sat down. “What is it?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew.

  He opened his mouth, the words that he’d held bottled up inside him ready to burst out. But still he couldn’t say them, for a long minute. “You—my mother—I mean…” His hands flapped. “Did you—do that with my mother?”

  I looked down at my own hands resting across my knees. “You mean, did I spend the night with her?” I looked up at him again, and nodded.

  His face got red. He’d expected me to deny it, even if it was true. Somehow the fact that I didn’t look ashamed about it made him feel ashamed instead. He began to blink hard; his mouth trembled.

  “Come here,” I said. He came across the room. “Sit down.” He sat on the bed, keeping his distance, staring at the floor. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “My mother … I saw her come out of your room the other morning, real early. She didn’t know I saw her. And she acted so … different.” His voice squeaked.

  “You know,” I said, “the first time I met her you damn near acted like a pimp, pushing her at me. No, I’m not saying it was your fault—” as he looked up with sudden anger in his eyes. “It just happened.… I only wondered how come it bothers you so much, now that it has. Because of what I am?”

  He shook his head, his jaw clenched.

  Very carefully, I let myself into his memory, looking for the answer he wouldn’t give me.

  “Because of what you saw at Argentyne’s club.” Until that night he’d been like any other kid, his curiosity about sex practically an obsession. But then in five minutes he’d learned more than he’d ever wanted to know. “You think it was like that, what your mother and I did?” I felt my face pinch with his pain.

  This time he nodded, blushing again.

  “Jiro.…” I broke off. “What you saw there—that wasn’t making love. That wasn’t even good sex. More like rape.” He looked at me now, out of the corner of his eye. “There is a difference.”

  “Are you going to marry my mother?”

  “Your mother’s already married.”

  He half frowned. “She could get a divorce. Aren’t you in love with her—?” Fantasies were starting to pop like bubbles in his mind.

  I looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Isn’t she in love with you?”

  I shook my head. “She’s just not in love with Charon.” I felt the bone-deep ache of his disappointment; couldn’t think of anything I could do that would ease it. Finally I said, “I think she loved your father … I know she loves you, and your sister. You’re more important to her than anything else in her life. Be glad.” You could have been me. But I didn’t say it. I wondered what it would be like to have been born a taMing, to have anything I ever wanted.… I couldn’t even imagine it. Even if I hadn’t been born rich—just to have had somebody there, all those years … anybody. I looked away from him, down at my scarred hands.

  He got up, slowly. “My mother said for me to ask if you’d … think about her, tonight.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that. Good night, Jiro.”

  He straightened his shoulders, trying hard to look like a man and not a boy. “Good night, Cat.” He went out of the room.

  I stayed where I was, listening to the lonely sound of the rain. I wasn’t ready to sleep, or in the mood to think about Lazuli right now. With a kind of surprise I realized it was Elnear I was still thinking about … worried about. I let my mind track until it found her. She was in her bed, but she wasn’t any closer to sleep than I was. The sedative the doctor had given her hadn’t been enough to take hold against her body’s own overdose of adrenaline. But her mind wasn’t on tomorrow or today or even yesterday any more. It was caught in a place where memory was like something seen in a dark mirror: where the image of a perfect afternoon in the Hanging Gardens of Quarro with the man she loved made her dizzy with misery; where the image of Talitha as a laughing baby filled her with sorrow. A place inside her that she couldn’t escape from, because the past was still so much sweeter than anything she thought of when she let it go, and tried to listen to the rain.…

  I got up again and went out, back through the dark, quiet halls to her room. There was a thin line of light tracing the crack under her door. I knocked.

  “Yes—?” I heard the word quaver with her surprise; felt her surprise behind my eyes.

  “It’s Cat.”

  There was silence for a minute. Then, “Come in,” she said.

  The door wasn’t locked. I went into the room, suddenly feeling more than a little self-conscious. But she looked up at me, her face mapped with shadows, and smiled. It was almost relief she felt, now that I was here.

  That made me smile too, a little, while I searched for something to say now that I’d come. “Jiro told me you were sick, ma’am. I just wanted to know if you’ll need me in the morning. And to … to know if you need anything now.”

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly not afraid to say it. “Sit with me for a while, if you would. I need some companionship, more than anything else. The one thing that no one has thought to offer me.” She glanced down, and back at me. “I feel terribly alone tonight … and somehow I don’t find it difficult to tell you that. I suppose because I think you probably already know that, and that it was why you came.” Her eyes held mine until I looked away. “Thank you for coming.” She was gathering things up from the surface of the bedcover as she spoke; restless holos of familiar faces that had been trying to keep her company, and failing.

  I sat down on the edge of a tapestry-covered chair, still afraid of breaking something as I glanced around the room. A single lamp with a shade made of stained-glass flowers turned the room’s light soft and warm. The furniture here was old and elegant, like most of the furniture in the house. I stared at the face of a woman carved on the back of a desk across the room, her long hair flowing down into the grain of the wood. I looked back again at the pictures of faces gathered in Elnear’s hands: Jiro and Talitha, and Kelwin taMing.

  “I hadn’t thought of it before, but sometimes it must be a kind of blessing to be a telepath,” Elnear said. “To be able to know that someone else is out there, thinking about you, even when you can’t see or hear them.”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just looking in through the windows of houses where you aren’t wanted.” In the land of the blind. I shrugged. “But like you said once, everything looks better when you don’t have to live with it, I guess.” And being what I was, not human enough, not Hydran enough, even that much was better than the alternative … better than nothing.

  She smiled again, and nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. If I’m lonely, at least I still have my privacy intact.”

  I settled back a little uncertainly into the curved hollow of the chair. “When I was with other psions, I used to have it both ways—the sharing, and the—solitude, when I wanted it. It was…” I looked away, into my own dark mirrors. Trying to feel something that made sense when I looked at my memories; only feeling numb. Drugged …

  I made myself remember Deadeye: how even with him, twisted up like he was, it had been so much easier—to speak without words, to just know. The way it should have been; the way it ought to be. The way it must have been for the Hydrans, before the humans ended it. “Humans are so…” groping for the words, when it would he so much easier just to show her—

  “Pathetic?” Elnear murmured. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

  I looked up at her; looked away again as soon as I met her eyes.

  “But you lived that way yourself for most of your life, didn’t you?” she said quietly. “Unable to know another person’s thoughts. I would think that would g
ive you more sympathy for the way we are than most humans are capable of themselves … more compassion.”

  My eyes squeezed shut as something spun and dropped suddenly inside me. “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “All I know is none of you can understand what it’s really like, to have what I had, after a lifetime of nothing—and then to lose it again. I didn’t know what was missing all those years. But now I know—” And finally I understood why being a telepath again was so important to me: because it was all I’d ever had that was really mine.

  “But you have it back,” she said, a little surprised.

  I shook my head. “If I go on using these drugs, I’ll burn it out for good.”

  She hadn’t understood that. “Then, if you’re only doing this because of me, you should stop now.”

  I shook my head again. “I can’t.”

  “I don’t want to be—”

  “I can’t.’

  She looked at me.

  I rubbed my face. “Don’t ask. Just forget I said that.” I started to get up.

  “I can’t.” she said.

  I stopped.

  “But if you wish, we can pretend that I have. If that will let you stay, and humor a lonely old woman a while longer.” Her mouth pulled up into a smile that was half regret and half irony. Her hands held the pictures a little tighter.

  I sat down again, trying not to look as awkward as I felt right then. Watching her hands, I asked, “How come you never had any children—you and your husband?”

  She looked down at the holos. “We always thought there would be plenty of time.” Suddenly she was blinking too much, as she stared at her husband’s face. “Isn’t it strange, how any little thing can—set off your memory, when you least expect it. A song, a certain light … Sometimes, when I remember my life with Kelwin, it seems to me as if those are someone else’s memories that have somehow gotten inside my head. That the person with him, that I remember so well, can’t possibly be me. It makes it so difficult … almost unbearable, sometimes. And yet not ever to think about them is more unbearable. And the worst part is that it’s the good memories that hurt me the most.”