Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  I almost stopped walking. I forced myself to keep moving, to keep up with them.

  “We have our differences of opinion on some matters,” Elnear said, glancing down as if it were her fault, “but I have no doubt about his effectiveness as a reformer, or the sincerity of his beliefs. He is a deeply religious man.”

  “He hates psions,” I said, looking at her. “How religious are you—?”

  She looked away. Neither one of them said anything; they began to walk again.

  I followed them. “I had a friend,” I said to their backs, “who told me once, ‘In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is stoned to death.’” They kept walking. “He was a psion. He’s dead now.”

  Elnear stopped, turning back. “Mez Cat,” she said finally. “Is there some point to all this?”

  I shrugged. “No,” I said, feeling my mouth twist down. “No point at all.”

  SIX

  I DIDN’T REALLY need anything more than the meeting with Stryger to make my day perfect. But when we got back to the taMing estates, there was a welcoming committee waiting in the yard as the mod settled. Jiro and his mother, both of them looking grim. One look, and I knew why. He’d cut his hair.

  “Elnear, a word with you—” Lazuli said, tight-lipped. Her hands were on Jiro’s shoulder’s like clamps. “About your aide.”

  I stood staring at the walls while they talked it over. Jiro looked like something with bad teeth had tried to chew his head off; he’d done it to himself. He liked it that way. His mother didn’t. So he’d blamed me. “Perhaps we had better return to the Crystal Palace.…” Lazuli was saying, the anger in her voice gone dreary now.

  “Not at all,” Elnear said, her own anger still honed by her embarrassment: She had a freak for an aide; but worse than that, he was a moron. She couldn’t fire me, she couldn’t excuse me, she couldn’t even explain why— “Mez Cat, you will stay away from my grandnephew and -niece from now on. You are not even to speak to them, do you understand?”

  I glanced at Jiro, staring up at me with sullen guilt from his mother’s shadow. I looked back at Elnear. “Yes, ma’am.” I turned away and started up the steps to the house.

  “Mez Cat—” Elnear’s voice.

  I stopped.

  “I think that you owe Lady Lazuli an apology.”

  I turned back, my jaw clenched so tight I thought I’d never get it open. But then I looked at Lazuli. In the blue evening light, it could have been Jule standing there, angry and unhappy and confused.… “I’m sorry,” I said. I’m sorry, Jule. I went into the house.

  I stayed in my room all evening, not even bothering to eat.

  “Hey, Cat.”

  I turned back from the windows, reeled my thoughts in; saw Jiro standing in my suddenly open door. “Jeezu. Stay away from me.”

  “You like my hair now?” He grinned self-consciously as he edged into the room, not even sure himself whether he’d come to make fun of me or to apologize.

  I leaned against the glass-paned door, staring out at the night, ignoring him to keep from strangling him.

  “Everybody’s real mad at you.”

  I looked back at him again. “Get out of here, you little croach.”

  “What’s a croach?”

  “A lying little cheat who makes other people pay for his mistakes.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that!”

  I laughed, past caring what anybody did to me now. “Tell your mother. Fire me.”

  “You shouldn’t have told me to cut my hair. That’s why I got in trouble.”

  I looked at him. “If you’re too stupid to understand sarcasm when you hear it, that’s not my fault.”

  He looked down. “I knew you were making fun of me.…” He pushed at his hair. “I don’t care.”

  “Then get out.” I started toward him, ready to help him along.

  His other hand was hidden behind him. Suddenly he brought it up. There was a gun in it.

  I stopped short, and stopped breathing.

  “Here,” he said. “I brought you this.”

  “Why?” I asked, my voice almost strangling.

  Still looking down, he said, “I want you to like me.”

  “Or what? You’re going to kill me?”

  “No! It’s just a target laser. Maybe you could use it to practice. Maybe you could show me how.…” He moved closer, holding it out.

  I took it out of his hand and threw it across the room. “What the hell do you think I am?”

  He stared at me, totally confused. “You said you were a merse—”

  “A merse is somebody who eats shit for money. It isn’t fun.”

  “Philipa said you’re supposed to guard Auntie. Have you killed a lot of people?” He kept insisting, blindly, not listening.

  Deep in my brain, a black empty hole opened up. I looked into it, needing to feel afraid, but not feeling anything.… “One,” I said. “That was one too many.” It sounded meaningless. I looked down at him, seeing his face again. I shoved him out the doorway into the hall. I slammed the door after him, and locked it. Then I lay down on my bed and watched my hands tremble for a while. And waited.

  When the house was dark and quiet, when all its minds had their shutters closed, I used the household system to call for a mod. I slipped outside; stood in the flagstone yard with my fingers crossed. About the time I was ready to give up and start walking, I saw it come drifting silently down to me.

  I wasn’t sure it would take my orders, but it did. I got in and it lifted, heading for N’yuk. “I quit,” I said, watching the taMings fall away behind me. I lifted my finger.

  This whole thing had been an insane mistake from the start. They didn’t need me, and I didn’t need them. I’d go into the city; find some kind of work, it didn’t matter what. Anything was better than this. I settled back in my seat. Even from here, I could see the nightglow of the distant shore.

  Before long I was dropping down again, somewhere over the urbs. I didn’t know where I was going to land, didn’t really care. There was a lot of light below me now, arrays of changing colors—too much light. It looked like … Grids clicked into place in my mind, artificial memories locking on. I sat up suddenly in my seat, my hand white-knuckled on the armrest. “Shit.” It was the Centauri Field Complex.

  Braedee was waiting on the platform as the mod’s door sprung open, his arms folded, a smile on his face. The light coming up from under him made him look inhuman. A dozen Security drones ringed the mod already, bristling with weapons. I wondered if he was planning a murder-suicide.

  I climbed out, slowly, and stood in front of him.

  “‘I quit’,” he quoted, and gave me the finger back, unblinking.

  I felt my face get hot again. “You heard it right.” Trying not to feel as helpless as he wanted me to. “What do you want with me? You know everything that goes on anyway.” I jerked my head at the mod, disgusted.

  “Not about what happens inside the FTA.”

  “You mean Lady Elnear really does get clear of you when she goes to the Arm?” I asked, surprised.

  No comment.

  “Well, that’s your problem.” I shook my head. “You should have listened to Jardan. She was right. I’m all wrong for this, and I’m out of it—”

  “I need you. You’re staying until I’m through using you.”

  “You can’t stop me.” But I couldn’t help glancing at the mod when I said it. “I’m a free citizen—” I held up my wrist with the databand.

  The databand went dead.

  My heart made a fist in my chest. I lowered my hand, touched all the right spots on the band; shook it, whacked my wrist with my free hand. Nothing woke it up. My hand knotted. “Turn it back on!”

  He shook his head, still smiling.

  “You can’t do this to me.” I couldn’t even imagine how he’d done it. “It’s illegal.”

  “You are a Centauri employee. In return for that privilege, you give up some rights.”

  “I ha
ven’t even signed anything—”

  “But your verbal agreement is on record. The rest is a formality.”

  “Goddamn it—” I looked away, across the endless Centauri grids crawling with light and activity even in the middle of the night. The wind brought me a thousand different noises—machinery, motion, voices calling—the smell of hot metal and ozone. I stood there, lost somewhere in the middle of it, remembering what it felt like to be invisible.

  “Now, tell me about what you saw today. Who you saw; everyone, everything.”

  I told him, when I found my voice again. And as I talked, the feeling that I was doing something wrong grew stronger with every word. Braedee looked bored, impatient, or indifferent at everything I said, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t violating a trust. Even if it meant Lady Elnear was safer that way, she was losing something. But I didn’t see what I could do about it. Or why I should care.

  “So you’ve already met Sojourner Stryger?” Braedee interrupted suddenly. “What was your impression of him?”

  I told him.

  He laughed. “That’s refreshing. Why are you the only person I’ve met who didn’t find him likeable?”

  “He’s a freakhater.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “And you’re a freak.”

  “Why don’t you like him?” I asked, because he didn’t.

  “I think he’s dangerous. He’s a fanatic; he’s crawling with a kind of charisma that even people with real minds seem to find irresistible … and he’s got too many supporters.”

  “You mean converts?” I thought of the glazed-looking mob he’d had trailing him.

  He smiled, like a death’s head. “I mean combines. No individual gets the kind of attention, controls the media base he does, without help. I know what his backers want from him. But I’m not sure he still remembers.… What I really want to know is what they’re going to get that they don’t expect.”

  “How about the FTA? They might give him that Council slot—?”

  He shrugged. “The FTA is no more interested in nonexistent purity than anyone else. Everyone on the Security Council was once someone else’s pawn. Do you play chess?”

  “No,” I said, not even sure what it was.

  “I didn’t think so.” He bent his head at the mod waiting behind me. “Go back to the estate. Sleep it off. Do your job.”

  “What about my contract?”

  “You actually want to look at it?” he asked.

  “You bet your ass, Corpse.”

  “It will be accessible on your unit in the morning. I think you’ll find it in order.” He sounded amused; I wondered what was so funny.

  “What about my deebee?” I held my databand out again.

  “You’ll be alive again when I think you’ve earned it.”

  I turned away, eating my frustration; trying not to give him any more satisfaction than he’d gotten off me already. I stopped, suddenly remembering something. “Who’s the other psion?”

  “What?” he said.

  “Besides Jule. There’s another one. You didn’t tell me there was a—”

  “Where?” He crossed the space between us in one stride.

  “The taMings…” I almost backed up, but there was nowhere to go. “Last night, at dinner. Somebody tried to use psi on me.”

  His hand closed on the front of my shirt. “Don’t ever lie like that to me again. I know everything about that family. I know what’s not possible.”

  I held his stare, until slowly his hand loosened.

  “You actually believe that,” he murmured. He looked down at his own hand, moved the fingers, as if he didn’t believe he’d been ready to snap my neck a second ago. “Another telepath?”

  I shook my head. “A teek … telekinetic.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was little things—trying to make me look stupid. Nothing obvious. Nothing anybody else would even recognize.”

  He frowned at the suggestion that somebody could really know things he couldn’t. And then his face went expressionless; his brain had gone somewhere else. After a second he was seeing me again, and he said, “You can’t tell me who it was?”

  I shook my head again. “I … I wasn’t wearing the drugs. You think this has anything to do with the Lady—?”

  “No.” He cut me off before I could even finish the sentence. His face changed. “You must have been mistaken.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Forget about it. Your problem is Lady Elnear, focus on her.” He’d been edging me further backward, until I didn’t have any choice except to get into the mod again.

  I put my hand on the mod’s wing door, ducking under it. “I don’t think—”

  “Exactly right,” he said. “Don’t.”

  I got in, the door sealed and the mod went up, taking me back to the taMings. I was nearly there before I looked down, and realized that my databand was alive again. Not until I’d earned it.…

  I went back across the flagstones and into Lady Elnear’s house, as quietly as I could. Right back where I’d started from; like in a nightmare. I crawled into my bed and lay there, wondering where I’d be when I woke up.

  * * *

  “Mez Cat … may I speak with you?”

  The next morning it was Lazuli taMing who caught me with my pants down. I looked up, startled by her voice, because I hadn’t felt anyone coming. I realized too late that I’d forgotten to put on another drug patch last night. She’d opened the door without knocking before I could even move.

  Now she stood staring at me, about as surprised as I was, but with her eyes still wide open, and no trace of embarrassment on her face.

  Because she didn’t look away, I didn’t move, staring back at her, my hands at my sides. She was wearing a long loose gown that drifted against her skin like snow, as if it was defying gravity. After a handful of heartbeats I finally reached out and caught up my shorts, pulled them on. “Ma’am?” I said, my voice a little hoarse. Now I knew where Jiro got his manners. But then, I was only an employee here. Maybe I was just another piece of furniture to her; a chair, or a bed.… I looked at the bed, back at her.

  She blinked; suddenly she looked as awkward as I felt. “Perhaps I should come back later.”

  “That’s all right.” I shrugged, pulling on my pants. Not saying the obvious.

  “I just wanted to apologize.…” She took a tentative step into the room.

  I smiled. “I’ll just remember to keep my door locked, ma’am.”

  She did blush now; half turned away, turned back. “No—I mean, yes, of course … I feel like a fool.” She laughed, that same chiming laughter I remembered from the dinner party. “I only wanted to say…” she met my eyes again, “Jiro told me this morning that it wasn’t your fault. About his hair.” She smiled helplessly, gesturing at her own hair, piled up like black silk on top of her head. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to say. You must think we’re … well.” She shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve thought of a lot of names yourself.”

  I felt my smile ease. “Yes ma’am; a few.… I seem to have forgotten them, though.”

  I thought she’d leave then, but she stood where she was, her hands hugging her elbows, looking toward the windows. “It’s very difficult. I don’t know what to do with him, half the time. Especially when he’s around his stepfather. He misses our home, he misses his father.…”

  “Where did you come from?” I asked, to fill up the silence.

  “Eldorado … it’s in the Centauri system. We came to Earth because I’m on the Centauri board now.”

  I wondered why she was telling this to a total stranger. Maybe because in this family, that was your only choice. “What happened to his father?”

  She looked back at me, clear-eyed. “I don’t know. He left me three years ago. Charon and I have been married a little over a year. He said that it would be in the best interest of the company if I married him. That way I could take my cousin Jule’s place … on the board.” Her chin
lifted as she saw the look that must have been on my face. “And Jiro and Talitha would be in the direct line to inherit a seat.”

  I closed my mouth, swallowed. She was married to Charon taMing—Jule’s father. She was Jule’s cousin and her stepmother. “You look a lot like her.…” Saying the obvious didn’t make either of us feel any more comfortable. I saw Charon in my mind, the head of Centauri Transport’s ruling board; saw the way he’d looked at me when I’d been looking at Lazuli. “I mean, I know Jule. She’s a friend. What happened to his first wife?”

  Lazuli looked away again. For a moment her eyes were as empty as I’d once seen Jule’s. “She was … she had some ties to Triple Gee. It was supposed to be a unifying marriage. She died some years ago … an accident.” She was trying not to think about it. There were no accidents in her world.

  I remembered the baby growing in vitro in a lab somewhere, wearing designer genes. I thought about Gentleman Charon’s hand; wondered what it felt like to have that touch your body. I didn’t say anything.

  “Jiro is away at study center most of the time. But every time he comes home, and we’re all together he seems more … more … It’s very … difficult. I’m sorry.” She was seeing me again. Her hands twisted. “Now I’m boring you, after insulting you—”

  “No, ma’am. At least it takes my mind off my own problems.” My mouth twitched up.

  She smiled too, uncertainly. “You’ve been very kind. Perhaps sometime you’ll tell your problems to me, and give me a chance to think of someone else besides myself for a while.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she meant that, until she reached across the space that still separated us, and touched my arm, very gently. Then she turned away, in a whisper of cloud-white, and was gone. I touched the spot where she’d touched me.

  It hadn’t happened while she was watching me. It hadn’t happened while she was talking to me. One touch, and it had finally happened.… I groaned, and went on dressing. I had a hell of a time fastening my pants.