Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  As I followed Lazuli and Jiro back through the med center’s halls, I began to realize that everyone I saw wore either a Centauri logo, or a Centauri security clearance. “Do you own this hospital too?” I said finally.

  Lazuli hadn’t said anything, or even looked at me, while we walked. Now she glanced at me, distracted by my voice—glad of the distraction. “It must look that way.” She laughed, a little too sharply, still teetering on the brink of something darker. “Centauri contributed a great deal to the construction of this wing. In return, we retain certain facilities on long term lease for our private use.”

  “The taMing Wing?” I said, and laughed.

  A little color came into her cheeks, a smile touched her lips. “A number of the larger combines do the same thing. It’s more … secure.…” She glanced away, her words fading. She slowed her footsteps until she was walking beside me. She held Jiro’s hand tightly in hers, and he didn’t complain.

  We took the lift up to the garage level. A few more steps across a silent space to a mod and I could let my whole body drop into autopilot. The day would finally be finished with me.

  The doors slipped open. The first thing I saw was Daric. He was surrounded. A dozen hypers were swarming over him like flies on garbage.

  “Jeezu!” I whispered. “Who let them in here?”

  “It’s a public access—” Lazuli looked left and right, her face pinching as she searched for a way around them.

  “Get away from me. I don’t know anything about it!” Daric waved his hands, twitching with irritation. “Ask him.” He turned, pointing at us, at me. “He’s the one you want to talk to. There’s your hero—” He ducked through the gauntlet and ran, as the hypers turned to see what he meant.

  And then they were all over us, trapping us against the wall, shoving hands that were cameras and spotlights, and faces with three eyes into my face—

  Suddenly the nearest hypers were stumbling back like something had sprayed them with bug killer; suddenly their echoing voices sounded like they were coming at us from the other side of a wall. We were shielded. “Cat,” Lazuli murmured, “you don’t have to speak to them now. We’re still inside Centauri’s security system.”

  I’d covered my face with my arm, ready to cut and run like Daric had if I needed to. But then I began to hear what the hypers were trying to ask me. It wasn’t about this afternoon … it was about tonight.

  Slowly I lowered my arm. Shander Mandragora himself was planted right in front of me; I could see him subvocalizing to his audience.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Lazuli. “Let it down. I want to talk to them.” The sudden rush of adrenaline that had hit me when I saw the hypers was making me feel brave and alert. She didn’t look happy, but suddenly the voices were rattling in our ears again as the hypers surged forward.

  “… Lady Elnear Lyron/taMing’s controversial young psion aide,” Shander Mandragora said, suddenly coming on audio as he elbowed somebody out of his way. “You’re quite a hero.” He smiled at me, cool, confident, and looking earnest as hell. He was wearing padded body armor. So were the rest of the hypers. I wondered if it was to protect them from each other, or from their victims. “Tell us how you managed to save the Lady and several other members of the taMing family from a human time bomb.” He was gazing right into my eyes, and his own eyes were the color of sapphires. He was standing so close to me that we were almost touching, and he looked just as good as he did on the threedy—lean, square-jawed, tough. I remembered having a dream about being him once, while I was asleep on a moldy mat in the back room of an abandoned building. “Did you use your mind?”

  I felt the crazy laughter try to get loose inside me again. I swallowed it, along with half a dozen wiseass answers. I couldn’t help staring at the camera lens in the middle of his forehead. It looked like a paste-on jewel, the same color as his eyes; but once you knew that it wasn’t, it was hard to look away from. Kind of like the muzzle of a gun. “Well, I…” My throat suddenly went dry with the fear of saying the wrong thing, and I had to swallow again. “Yeah. I used my … my Gift.” Trying not to sound like I was embarrassed to admit it. “I picked up on a party guest who’d had something done to his head. He wasn’t … human any more, he was a machine. I knew I had to warn the Lady. I was almost too late.”

  “What made you read the guests’ minds tonight?” Mandragora asked, blinking as if he suddenly wondered what I was doing now. “Are you always ‘on’?”

  “No.” I shook my head, tried to smile away the look on his face. “It’s hard work. I was just doing my job. Checking out the crowd to make sure they were all right. It’s part of what I was hired to do.”

  “You mean you were hired by Lady Elnear as a personal spy—” Someone’s open hand flashed in front of Mandragora’s face; a camera eye stared at me from its palm. Some combine logo I didn’t recognize was tattooed above it.

  “No—” I bit off the curse that wanted to follow, wondering if the hand belonged to Stryger’s media base.

  “To spy for Centauri—?” This hyper had on Triple Gee colors.

  “I was hired to protect her! Because somebody’s been trying to kill her. Like they almost did tonight.”

  “Why didn’t the Lady Elnear tell us about that in her rebuttal—?” Shander Mandragora was back in my face again, and somebody was groaning in the background.

  I shrugged, feeling my frown get deeper. “Maybe she didn’t feel like discussing it with the whole galaxy.”

  “Lady Elnear—” Lazuli said, very loudly, very clearly, “didn’t want the people watching to feel that she was using a personal problem to gain their support. She felt that her arguments had to be strong enough to stand on their own.”

  I smiled, grateful, as the cameras, and the heat, turned away from me toward her.

  “Lady Lazuli taMing,” Mandragora said, acknowledging and identifying her from an augmented memory bank. “Another survivor of tonight’s tragedy. Do you have any idea who would want to kill Lady Elnear?”

  “No.” Lazuli shook her head. “No idea at all.” I felt her falter behind the skin-deep mask of a board member’s arrogance.

  “How is Lady Elnear? Why hasn’t she come out yet?” someone shouted. Mandragora was losing ground.

  “She’s fine, perfectly fine!” Lazuli had to raise her voice again to make them listen. “A personal friend was seriously injured. The Lady is waiting for news about her condition.”

  “Why didn’t you save everybody?” Somebody else jarred me back against the wall. “Why didn’t you bring in Security?”

  Whose logo was it? I couldn’t even see. “I did—didn’t have time.” Not sure why I was covering for Braedee.

  “Why didn’t you stop him yourself? Why did you let those other people die? You could have stopped him with your mind.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I’m just a telepath, that’s all. Not even a very good one. I’m not God. I’m not a Corpse, either.”

  “But you are a criminal. Why did Lady Elnear hire a traitor who worked for a psion terrorist? Why are you free? Sojourner Stryger called you—”

  “I know what he called me.” I shoved the camera away, and three more replaced it. “He’s a liar!” I twisted until I could see Shander Mandragora and he could see me. “You let Stryger smear the Lady today!” I yelled. He’d done it … he could fix it. “Jeezu, I don’t believe this—I didn’t work for Quicksilver. I killed him! Doesn’t anybody here know that? How the hell can you know all about me and not know that?”

  “Do you mean you were a part of his terrorist group, and you betrayed him to the FTA?” he called. The stupid bastard.

  “I killed him in self-defense, goddamn it! And to save my friends, and to save your stinking telhassium. I wasn’t a traitor, I worked for the FTA. You’ve got a head full of history, why the hell don’t you use it? We were fucking psion heroes. For about as long as it took to say our names … just like tonight. But I missed it all, because I had a nervous brea
kdown after I killed him. That’s what it means to be a telepath, and kill somebody.…” I had to stop, taking a deep breath in the sudden silence. “And I guess it still doesn’t mean shit to be a psion and a hero.”

  By the time the questions started again, it was too late. I was halfway to the waiting mod. Lazuli and Jiro followed behind me.

  The mod sealed us in, out of reach, and took us away at Lazuli’s order. As we left the garage, its too-normal voice said, “Lady Lazuli, I have detected five intrusive listening devices in the clothing of the passengers.”

  “Deactivate them,” she said, her voice still perfectly calm. I almost thought I felt the scramble burst that burned them out. Lazuli waited until the voice reported, “Clear.” Then she slumped back into the formfoam of the seat, and covered her face with her hands. After a moment her hands slid down again, dropped limply into her lap.

  “They bugged us?” I said, incredulous.

  She nodded. I saw tears shining on her face in the brief light of a passing streetlamp. Jiro looked up at her, and his mouth began to tremble as he saw his mother crying. Suddenly tears were running down his cheeks. He hid his face against her as he cried.

  I swallowed hard, keeping my mind clenched, afraid that in a minute it was going to be three of us. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, only realizing now how much it had cost her to show the hypers that proud, cool face; to protect me, and Elnear, the way she had. “I didn’t know they’d…” My hands made fists; let go again, too tired to hold onto the anger. My whole body ached, my nerves felt raw. I wished I’d taken everything they’d offered me at the med center.

  “It’s all right,” she lied. “I’m quite used to them.” She sat up straighter, wiped at her eyes. “It was just the final … the last thing, that was too much. They had no right to do that to you, to Elnear through you … no right!” She blew her nose. “But it’s all they know how to do—”

  “I knew the combine hypers were all liars,” I said, rolling the sour words on my tongue. “I just didn’t know the Indy’s hypers were all shitheads.”

  Her mouth twitched, and Jiro lifted his face from her shoulder to stare at me, as if hearing someone talk to his mother that way was more than he could believe.

  “’Scuse me, ma’am.” I looked out the window at the one large moon rising, the dark world down below; for a heartbeat remembering somewhere else.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “I find it refreshing.” She frowned then, thinking about something else. “Our own media people should have been on this, and given them the true story by now. I don’t understand why they didn’t seem to know the truth.”

  I glanced back at her, realizing that she knew what everyone else knew about me, now—the truth, and even the lies—but it hadn’t seemed to make any difference to her. “Ma’am,” not using her name, because Jiro was still looking at me that way, “did Braedee say anything at the hospital tonight about the—about what Stryger claimed I did?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nobody asked him?”

  “Great-uncle Hwang did,” Jiro volunteered. “Charon said forget it. He said it didn’t matter, it just made everything perfect.”

  “Perfect?” I frowned, wondering what in hell he’d meant by that. I was too tired to try to figure it out. “I’m not a traitor,” I said.

  Lazuli looked at me, her face calm in the wash of moonlight. “I never thought you were.”

  “Why not?”

  She glanced down suddenly, and shrugged. “You don’t act like one.”

  That didn’t make any sense either, but I didn’t push it. Instead I asked, “What did Daric tell you and the Lady?”

  She looked surprised, as if I’d asked something totally pointless. “He said he took you and Jiro to hear Argentyne perform. He said that you seemed to enjoy the show more than Jiro did.… I asked him not to take Jiro anywhere again without telling me first.” Her arm curved around him protectively.

  I glanced at Jiro, glad we were all in darkness just then.

  “I’m never going anywhere with Daric again,” Jiro said, his voice hard with anger and betrayal. His eyes kept touching me and jerking away, coming back to my face again.

  “Why?” Lazuli asked.

  “He’s a croach,” Jiro said.

  Her fingers moved in a short, silent question. He shook his head. She looked back at me again. My stomach tightened as I waited for her to ask me what had really happened. But she didn’t ask. Nobody said anything more.

  When we finally reached the estates. I helped Lazuli steer Jiro to his room. I waited while she put him to bed, letting the doorway hold me up, too exhausted to bother moving. But as she waved the lights down and came out into the hall, I heard Jiro call my name. I glanced at her, and she nodded. I went into the room.

  “Cat…?” Jiro said, his voice thick with sleep.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” As my eyes adjusted, I could see his face clearly in the dim wash of light from the hall. He couldn’t see mine.

  “You probably think I’m real stupid, don’t you?” he said.

  “No.” I half smiled. “Just real lucky. I guess nobody’s luck lasts forever.”

  “You saved Aunt Elnear, just like you promised. And you saved my mother too—” His voice blurred with feeling, his eyes got wet again. “I’ll give you anything you want. I have stuff like you’ve never seen—”

  I didn’t say anything. I turned away, starting back across the room.

  “Cat—?”

  I stopped.

  “I was scared of you tonight. I hated you, too.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t any more.”

  I did smile, this time. “That’s all I want.”

  Out in the hall Lazuli looked at me, curious.

  “He just wanted to say thanks.”

  She nodded, hesitated … reached out and put her hand on my arm. “Cat…”

  “You already have. Good night, ma’am.” I went back along the hall, before it was too late. I stumbled up the stairs to my own room and fell into bed, hardly stopping long enough to peel off my clothes.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, feeling the seconds pass like water dripping; feeling every centimeter of my spreadeagled body twitch and crawl and shiver like a plucked string. Closing my eyes only made me see things I’d never wanted to see in the first place. Opening them again, in the empty bed in the empty room, only reminded me of how alone I was.

  And then my door opened softly, and someone stepped inside. Caught in the random moonlight, her pale gown moving around her … Jule. A tiny spark of light caught fire in the palm of her hand, guiding her across the uncertain darkness to me.

  “Lazuli…” I pushed myself up, feeling the covers slide down over the sudoskin bandaging my shoulder. You shouldn’t be here don’t do this to me I want you.… Afraid to speak, because I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth first.

  She set the lamp chip on the table beside the bed, stood gazing down at me. Her night-black hair fell free over her shoulders, her skin was like amber in the lampglow. She reached up, began to unfasten the pearls that buttoned the neckline of her restless gown.

  “Wait—” I whispered, my throat tight.

  Her fingers froze; her eyes clung to me.

  “What about—Charon.” I looked down, not sure who I was more afraid for, her or me. “If anybody finds out—”

  Her eyes filled with sudden tears. “Please…” she said, and her voice trembled. “Please don’t make me beg you. I need someone. I don’t want to be alone tonight.…”

  I raised my hand; she caught it, kissed it, settling onto the bed. Dizzy with disbelief, I let go the clenched fist that my mind had been since the explosion, letting it fill with her thoughts, her emotions. She’d almost died tonight.… But she was alive, so alive that every nerve in her body sang with need. Nothing mattered tonight, not Charon, not tomorrow, not who she was or even what I was. She needed to feel loved, and that was all she knew. She wanted me
to love her, me and no one else, because she’d known when I looked at her how much I wanted it too.…

  I pulled her down beside me with unsteady hands, feeling her hair brush my cheek as I found her mouth and kissed it. I broke away again, not able to meet her eyes. Burning with the hunger in my blood … not knowing what to do next. I’d been naked in bed with strangers before, for nearly half a lifetime; but all there had ever been between us was money. Nameless, faceless, we’d done what we had to do, with no real emotion and no expectations. I’d never had a woman like this—this beautiful, this untouchable—not in my wildest fantasies. One who really wanted me.… One who had a right to expect things that maybe I didn’t know how to give. The fear that I didn’t know how to be what she wanted suddenly seemed like the worst fear I’d ever known.

  But she took my hand as gently as if she thought I was a virgin, and laid it on her breast. I fumbled with the buttons of her gown, awkward and uncertain as I finished what she’d started. The gown seemed to melt away under my clumsy fingers like it had a life of its own, the silken cloth becoming her flesh, warm and yielding. I shuddered with the electric shock of our contact as she pressed herself against my thighs; rolled onto her, holding her there under me, her softness beneath my sudden painful hardness. It was too easy to go on then, after all that had happened tonight … too easy.

  She clung to me, her mouth open, hungry for my kisses. Her lips were like flowers after the rain, I could have kissed them forever, lost inside the wet, warm contact, feeling her pleasure … she had always wanted to be kissed this way, kissed and kissed endlessly … feeding my own. Her hands explored me in slow, grazing circles, the white scars on my back, the smooth brown of my sides, my thighs. I slid off of her, my own restless hands covering her breasts, curving down along the gentle hills of her belly, into the warm, waiting valley between her legs.

  She moaned softly, her hips moving to meet my touch, guiding me deeper into her hidden places. I felt the murmur of her mind, as open and yearning as her body. I followed its whispering voice down, deeper and deeper, until I knew every sweet ache, every burning, dazzled second of her arousal. I’d never made love to a woman while I’d had my Gift—never known what it could do, how it doubled every ecstasy, her pleasure woven into mine until every place I touched her body brought heat as dizzying as her touch against my own. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid any more that I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Because I knew what she wanted.…