Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  “Why’d you snatch me, then?”

  “Would you have come, if we’d simply asked you?”

  I thought about it. “No.”

  He raised his eyebrows, as if that was all the explanation it needed. “That heart sign on the museum wall … you think of that?”

  He shook his head. “Lady Jule suggested we do something … unusual to attract your attention.”

  My mouth twitched. I jerked my head at the image in the air behind him. “You don’t want me. I’m brain-damaged.” The way they’d brought me here told me enough about what I could expect if I hired on as a corporate telepath. And I couldn’t imagine anything they’d want that I’d ever want to do for them.

  “That blockage is self-inflicted.” He half frowned, as if he couldn’t imagine why having somebody die inside your mind might make some part of you want to dig a hole and never come out of it again. He was right. He couldn’t imagine. “It isn’t irreversible. Lady Jule suggested that you might even find working for us to be a therapeutic experience.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”

  His face hardened. He was allowed to believe that I’d lie to him, but I didn’t have the same right. “I have a communication from the Lady,” he said. “She realized that you might be skeptical.”

  I leaned forward on the couch. “Let me see it.”

  “When I’m ready.” My picture on the invisible screen behind him ate itself. The sun was back over his shoulder again. “First you hear me out. This is no ordinary security position we’re offering. I’m not stupid enough to think that would interest someone like you. And you hardly fit our profile.” I smiled; he didn’t. “This is a matter that concerns the taMing family personally. One of them, Lady Elnear, has had attempts made on her life. So far we have successfully blocked the attacks. But we have been unable to discover why the attempts are being made.”

  “You mean she’s such a wonderful human being she doesn’t have any enemies?” I said sourly.

  The frown came back. “On the contrary. There are any number of competing interests that could be considered Centauri’s enemies … her enemies. Lady Elnear’s holdings have united Centauri and ChemEnGen,” as if that was supposed to mean something to me. “She is the widow of Gentleman Kelwin, and fills his seat on our board, as well as being the lynchpin stockholder of our merger lease with ChemEnGen. She also votes for our interests in the Federation Assembly.”

  “Oh.” She was either one hell of a woman, or a complete pawn. I thought I could guess which. “And you want me to find out which one wants her dead?” If all their best snoopware couldn’t track it, I could hardly believe they thought I’d have better luck.

  But he nodded. “You would function as her aide, accompanying her at all times. Lady Jule suggested that using your … abilities to protect another person might help your condition.”

  I sat up straight. “The person would have to matter. Lady Elnear doesn’t mean shit to me, and neither do the interests of Centauri Transport.” I shook my head, starting to get my nerve back. “Anyway, I’ve been through enough therapy to change the lives of everyone on a planet, but I still can’t keep control of my psi. I used to be good enough—maybe—to do what you want me to do, but not any more. If you really want Lady Elnear safe, find somebody else.”

  He didn’t answer me at first. But then he said, “There are drugs that can make it possible. That can block the kind of pain that’s crippling you. We can get them for you.”

  I looked down. “I know,” I said, finally. I looked up at him again. “There are drugs that will let you walk around for days on a couple of broken legs, too.”

  His fingers began to move one by one, tapping a silent code on his black desktop; spelling out his impatience. He looked at me, his mouth thinning. “Centauri will make it worth your while.”

  I shook my head again. “Sorry. I’ve already got something to do. You interrupted it. Take me back to the Darwin.” I got to my feet.

  “If you wish.” Braedee leaned back in his seat and cracked his knuckles. “But your credit is down to three meaningful digits, and your tuition will be due again at the end of this term. What are you going to do then?” It wasn’t just curiosity; the words were a knife blade pricking my ribs. “Yes,” he said, smiling, “we really do know all about you.”

  I felt the helpless anger try to choke me again. I hadn’t even had a rating or a databand until three years ago; hadn’t even existed to the galactic Net that monitored the lives and fortunes of everybody worth noticing, from the day they were born to the day they died. Then I’d been paid off for my “service” to the Federation with a rating that made me dizzy, and the freedom of a galaxy to spend it in. I hadn’t been stupid enough to think it would last forever. But I’d lived my entire life in the bottom of a sewer. I had a lot to learn, and a lot to forget. and I’d wanted to see what I’d been missing all my life. So I’d signed up for the Floating University, which cost a lot.

  “No smart answer?” Braedee asked, pressing a little harder. “Did you really think that repository for the spoiled offspring of privilege was going to prepare you to live in a high-level technological society?” I felt my mouth tighten; so did he. The smile started to come out on his face again. “I understand that until about three years ago you were completely illiterate.… Of course, given enough time and training, you’d be marginally employable, although your lack of social skills would probably keep you in a low-level position. But you aren’t just ignorant—you’re also a psion. You look very Hydran. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

  I felt my face flush. “I don’t have to work for a combine.” I was fighting the fear inside me—the fear that it was all true. It was bad enough just being a psion. All human psions had Hydran genes in them somewhere. But most of them didn’t have to wear it on their faces; their mixed blood was ancient history.

  “Of course not. There are other jobs. Contract Labor is always looking for bodies.… But you know that.”

  My hand went to my wrist, covering it, like somebody caught naked; covering the scar that still marked the place where the bond tag had been fused to my flesh. But it was already covered. My fingers felt the warmth of the databand, solid and real. Mine. “Forget it, scum-butt. You just lost me.” I stood up for the last time.

  Suddenly Jule’s face was in the air behind him, larger than life, so real I could almost touch her. Her gray, upslanting eyes were looking straight into mine. Her face was tired, pale, uncertain … beautiful. “Cat,” she said, and a trace of real smile pulled at her lips, as if she could really see me. I felt my mouth smile in answer, even though I knew she couldn’t. I hadn’t seen her face in over two years. Seeing it again made me ache, the way sometimes a song would, triggering memories. I wondered if it would always make me feel that way.

  “I’m not sure this is the right thing,” she went on, glancing away at someone, and back. “It has to be your choice—I told them that—or it’s no good.” She brushed a long strand of midnight-colored hair out of her eyes as the breeze lifted it. There was the shifting green of leaves behind her, the wink of sunlight on spray. I felt the breeze touch my face, smelled the fresh smells of damp earth and flowers. Whoever had made this tape hadn’t spared anything to make it feel real. I wondered if Jule was in the Hanging Gardens, upside in Quarro. I felt a twinge of homesickness for the first time in my life. They hadn’t taped her at the Center for Psionic Research, in the stink and the noise and the darkness of Oldcity. Maybe they couldn’t take it. Maybe they hadn’t wanted me to think about that. Except that it made me think about that anyway.

  “They told me about Elnear.” Jule’s eyes darkened. “I don’t understand it … hut if you can help her, Cat, if you’re willing to, do it. Please. She’s the only one…” she glanced away again, “the only one in my family who ever loved me.” Shadows moved across her face—leaf-patterns, and the darkness of past lives. Her eyes were both hard and longing when they met mine again. “Sh
e’s a good woman. She needs someone she can trust. She can trust you. I trust you. I…” she did smile, now, “we miss you.” She lifted a hand in farewell, and she was gone.

  The room seemed colder without her; emptier than if I’d been there alone. But I wasn’t alone. I looked up. Braedee’s eyes were fixed on my face, sucking in everything that showed. I almost asked to see the tape again. I thought about him watching me watch her. I didn’t ask. Remembering it would have to be enough. All right. I thought. For you. All right. And it was all right this time that she couldn’t hear me think it.

  “She told me not to tell you this,” Braedee said, “but the Center that she and her husband run is almost out of funds too.”

  I felt my mouth twist. “You always go one step too far, you know that?”

  “Then I have you.” It wasn’t a question.

  I glanced out at the sun, where Jule’s image had been. “You don’t know how close you just came to losing me again. One day you’re going to walk right off the edge.”

  He smiled.

  “I’ll do it for Jule. But I want the money. For me. For the Center too. Set up the contracts. I’ll tell you if it’s enough.”

  “Of course. Some now—more later, if you do your job. We’ll settle the details as soon as we reach Earth.”

  “Earth?” I said, sounding a little like I’d been hit in the stomach.

  “That’s home to the taMings.” I was amusing him again. “They are a rather conservative family.”

  “Home.” It was a strange thought. I looked down at myself, back at him. “You know, Braedee, you’re in the wrong kind of work. You should have been a blackmailer.”

  He shook his head. “You have a lot to learn about politics, boy.”

  TWO

  ONCE BRAEDEE HAD finished convincing me that nothing was ever free, including me, he signaled the doorway like a magician calling up tricks. When I turned around to look, I wasn’t really surprised to find someone standing there: a tiny dark-haired woman who looked like an antique doll, like her body might be made of soft cloth under the cover of her dark business suit. She wore a combine logo like a brooch at her throat. It wasn’t Centauri’s.

  I clapped my hands, once, twice, three times. “That’s pretty good,” I said, looking back at Braedee. “Can you do animals too?”

  One of the guards made a sniggering noise. Braedee looked at him with those eyes. He stopped.

  “This is Mez Jardan, Lady Elnear’s Executive Assistant,” Braedee said, the words dry as sand. “Go with her. She’ll brief you as much as possible on what your duties will be as Lady Elnear’s aide. Afterward I’ll see you again.” The last part was more a threat than a promise.

  I nodded and stood up, meeting the woman’s eyes for the first time. I had to look way down; she barely came up to my shoulder, and she was wearing platform shoes. “I’m all yours,” I said. Her expression didn’t change; she still looked like she smelled something rotten.

  I followed her to the ship’s commons. There were long bone-colored couches hugging the wall, a round metal table with magnetic chairs locked to the floor. Private—but not too private. She sat down at the table, looking back at me.

  “I already know how to eat,” I said from the doorway.

  “I doubt that.” She folded her hands. Her voice was high-pitched, almost like a child’s. “We don’t have a lot of time, and you know almost nothing of the world you will be entering—”

  “Earth?” I came into the room and sat down.

  “No,” she said. “I meant politics.”

  I leaned back in my seat, twisting the chair on its single leg with the motion of my foot. “There’s that word again.”

  Her doll’s face reddened. “Now listen to me, Mez … Cat,” stumbling over it, as if there should have been more to my name. “I watched your performance back there with Braedee. It didn’t impress me. You have a smart mouth, but I see no proof that you have a mind to match it. I am going to give you a lot of information, and I am forced by circumstance to deliver it verbally. I will repeat it as often as necessary until you understand everything. You may interrupt to ask me questions, but they had better be short and to the point.”

  I shrugged, smarting a little. “You won’t have to repeat yourself. I’ll get it right the first time.”

  Her small mouth twisted down.

  “Try me.” I leaned forward.

  She took a deep breath. “All right, then. Some background, to begin with…” She told me what Braedee had already told me about Lady Elnear and how she’d married into the taMings. “A premarital noninterference agreement was signed, but since the Gentleman’s death the taMings have … taken a greater interest in ChemEnGen’s policy-making…” Her voice soured; she wanted to say more. But she knew whose ship we were on, just as much as I did. Combines had long memories. “The Lady is under constant Centauri Security protection at all times since the … the incidents.” Her hands, which had been lying quietly on the table, curled around each other, protecting, strangling. Suddenly I was sure of one thing: Mez Jardan’s loyalty to her boss was as total as her hatred of Centauri. With an effort that cost her, she controlled her hands and laid them quietly one on top of the other on the table surface again. She glanced up at me. “Well?”

  I began to repeat everything she’d told me, word for word.

  Her eyes widened, for a heartbeat, before the tight, furrowed frown came back. “Are you hotwired?”

  I touched my head. “It comes with the wetware. Package deal.” She looked blank. “I was born that way. Most telepaths can do it, if they want to bother.” I’d bothered because it helped me learn. I remembered things perfectly. It was forgetting that was hard to do.

  I felt more than saw her withdraw, as if every separate cell of her body wanted to crawl away from me.

  “Psion,” I said, and she flinched. “Telepath. Better get used to it.”

  “We didn’t ask for you,” she snapped. “You were Centauri’s idea. The last thing that Elnear needs is a taMing mindreader to spy on her.”

  She’d said “Elnear.” Not “the Lady.” She must be more than a top aide: maybe a personal friend. “She send you to check me out?” I asked.

  “In part.” She glanced away. “We’re forced to accept you, in any case. The least I can do is try to make you presentable.” Emphasis on try. “Not even all of the taMing family will know that you are a psion, when you arrive. They think that I am away simply to find her a new personal aide. Her previous aide was poisoned.” The frown looked almost like pain now.

  “How?” I asked.

  “A piece of sillaby, intended for Elnear, which Elnear had given away because she doesn’t like sillaby. Clara nearly died. Her health is still not good.…”

  “Poison candy? Pretty crude,” I said. Maybe they’d counted on surprise. “Who do you think would want to kill her?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, looked down again. “I just don’t know. Braedee comes up with new possibilities every day, and all of them are possible.… I’ve been with her for twenty-five years. and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “You sound like it’s a big surprise. I thought the combines spent half their budgets trying to screw each other.” I’d done a lot of reading, after Jule had taught me how, and a lot of accessing once I’d joined the university … trying to figure out how the Federation worked, and how I’d come to be who I was, and where I was in it. Facts and figures can tell you a lot, but they can’t tell you that.

  Her face eased. “It is a fact of life in her position, yes.…” Her gaze left me again. “But Elnear is not like that. She believes in the perfectability of humanity. She works only for the greater good—”

  “That’s enough to make some people want to kill you, right there.”

  Her eyes snapped back to my face. “Listen to me, you deviant. If you ever say anything like that in front of her, I’ll have you—”

  “Hey,” I said, cutting her off bef
ore she could finish it. “Okay, Mez Jardan, you’re one tough bitch, and your boss is a goddamn saint. Just tell me what I have to do, and get it over with.”

  She smoothed her hands again. “As I was about to say … Lady Elnear considers her true work to be her involvement with the Federation Transport Authority’s independent Drug Enforcement Arm—”

  A nark. A combine vip, a saint, and a nark … everything I heard about Lady Elnear made me feel less like I ever wanted to meet her, let alone save her from death. I didn’t say anything.

  “She has been so dedicated in her work for the Arm, and such an effective media representative, that the FTA is considering her for the current opening on the Security Council.”

  I whistled softly. Braedee hadn’t mentioned that. That was something like going from being a saint to being a god. There were only twelve human beings on the Security Council, and they made all the FTA’s policy. And the FTA regulated all interstellar commerce.

  “As you can see, you will be exposed to levels of society and government about whose rules you know almost nothing. You may allow people to believe that you are acting as a kind of physical bodyguard as well as in the capacity of an aide, to help explain your lack of the—usual requirements for the position. But under no circumstances will you tell anyone that you are a psion.”

  “Why?”

  “That should be obvious. If you’re to be of any use at all in helping discover who is trying to kill the Lady, then your ability has to be kept secret.”

  “That’s not going to be so easy.” I pointed at my eyes, the long slit pupils. A lot of people knew what that meant.

  “Braedee will take care of that,” she said.