Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  I climbed up after her, more than surprised. But a kind of panic started to choke me the second I thought about taking her seriously. I shook my head. “I don’t have any talent.”

  “You never know until you try. We could wire you ourselves. Nobody would have to know. It takes no time; it doesn’t even hurt.” She lifted her hair with her hand, showing me the flesh-colored jack on the back of her neck. She was still thinking about what she’d felt last night. “Wouldn’t you like to find out…” She wanted to find out—what it would be like to link me into something bigger, and play my mind. Her copper stare met me, dared me.

  I glanced away at the players, wondering what they’d think of that. “Maybe … someday. Not today.” I shrugged, too much else on my mind right now. Besides, she might think it was nothing, but if the FTA’s security scans picked up that socket, I’d be in deep shit. “Anyway, what you did last night was about as real as it gets. You don’t need a psion if you can make that happen with your own head.”

  She shook off the compliment. “Holograms. Cheap tricks. I can imagine it, but I can’t make people share it, live it, even with illusions. You knew it wasn’t real.…”

  I grinned. “Yeah—but I forgot. And that’s the real magic, right? If you can make people forget it’s not real.”

  She shrugged, annoyed and flattered.

  A couple of the players began to clap and whistle long trills, as we came toward them and my face registered. I felt my face start to go red, figuring last night here at the club was the reason.

  But then one of them said, “Yo, Cat. Caught you on the Morning Report,” and the other heads were nodding.

  Argentyne turned to look at me, curious. “What happened?” She wondered suddenly if I’d come down here to get away from something I’d done.

  “He only saved your habit and a bunch of other vips after you threw him out of here. Some assassin blew himself into meat salad at a taMing hole last night.” The flute player bowed gracefully toward me. She was dressed metallic, as long and thin as the flexible pipes that had replaced the fingers on one of her hands.

  “Daric—?” Argentyne said, with a sudden sharp pang of guiltshockfear. “Daric—is he all right?”

  I nodded unenthusiastically.

  “You saved him?” she repeated.

  “It was an accident,” I said, and someone laughed, but it wasn’t her. “I was hired to guard Lady Elnear. He just got in the way.”

  She was still looking at me through a haze of mixed emotions. “Oh God,” she murmured, and looked away. “Why didn’t he tell me himself…?”

  “You still expect him to act like a human being?” one of the players wearing a touchboard in his chest asked. “To treat you like one?”

  “Oh, bugger off, Jax,” she said. “Who asked you?” Under the silver skin, the silver hair, I got the feeling there was somebody a lot more normal than Daric was, maybe a lot more ordinary than she wanted to admit to herself.

  “Daric looked pretty fragged,” somebody else said gently. “Don’t worry about it. Maybe it’ll shake some steel into him.” He grinned, his teeth large and white against his blue-black skin and beard. He wore the beard tucked through his belt, and some instrument that looked like a sack full of light plugged into his neck.

  “Since when do you get up so early, Midnight?” she asked him, still prickling.

  He shrugged, blinked his bloodshot eyes. “Up? I haven’t been to bed.”

  She half smiled; twitched her shoulders to shake off her mood. “Well,” she murmured to me, rubbing her face, “thanks anyway, even if it’s thanks for nothing. Tell me what you’re looking for. If we’ve got it, you can have it.”

  I glanced at the players, back at her.

  “They’re family,” she said. “And they’re not easily shocked.” She moved back to the edge of the stage and sat down, her bare feet dangling. The players shrugged and flopped down where they were, waiting.

  I sat down too, feeling less obvious that way. “I need some drugs.”

  Her face twitched almost imperceptibly. She took the camph out of her mouth and looked at it. “Why don’t you just ask Daric?”

  I grimaced. “Two reasons. The second one is that he doesn’t have what I need.”

  The twitch turned into a frown. “You’re in that deep? You want hard stuff?” She was surprised.

  I shook my head. “Just hard-to-get stuff. Topalase-AC.”

  She looked at me blankly. “What’s that? I never heard of it.”

  “It lets me use my psi.”

  “You need drugs for that?” she said. “I thought you were born that way.”

  “I was.” I explained, keeping it as short as I could.

  “Hm,” she said, when I was done. She pulled her knees up, hugging her ankles. “Why won’t Centauri give you what you want?”

  “Charon taMing’s a freakhater—Daric’s sister Jule is a psion. He’s afraid of me.”

  “Of you?” She laughed.

  “Should I be insulted?” I said.

  “Oh, hell no.” She waved a hand at me. “Jeezu, have you seen Charon—?”

  “Lots.”

  “Then you know what I mean.… So they want you to do this gig but they won’t give you the equipment, is that it?”

  I nodded. “That’s it. But Braedee said he wouldn’t stop me from getting it myself.”

  “You really want to burn your brains out? You care that much about them? Why not just go along, play dumb and collect your pay?”

  I thought about it. I looked back at her. “Why do you go with Daric? Just for the money?” It came out a little nastier than I’d meant it to.

  (Fuck you—) I heard it through her eyes, but then her expression changed. “It’s not like that. He’s not like he seems—” Remembering last night, she broke off. “Well, maybe he is … but not when we’re alone.” Her hand tightened into a painful fist. “I care about him—”

  “You love him.” Saying what she couldn’t make herself say. Asking the question even though it was none of my business, just because the idea was so unbelievable.

  She looked back at me, suddenly resenting it. “Sometimes.… So what if I do? It’s none of your business, kid.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She thought about it a minute longer. “You care about Lady Elnear?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess I do.” Surprised by that, too. Without meaning to, I thought about Lazuli, and her children. I touched my ear, the emerald earring; let my hand drop.

  “Lady Elnear wants to change the universe,” Argentyne said. “What about you?”

  “Just part of it.”

  She laughed. “You got it, laddie love.” She climbed to her feet, looking back at the players. “I don’t know who to call on. Anybody know where he could find someone to give him what he wants?” The ones who were still awake shrugged, heads moved back and forth. No.

  “We don’t do a lot of drugs,” she said, as if she had to explain it. “It screws up our. timing.” She stared at her feet, scratched her head. “Daric knows the territory better than any of us do. You got a sample of his dream jewelry last night. He plays hard, and he makes deals for his friends.…” She was worried that he played too hard, that he was already in too deep. “If you won’t ask him, I can tell you who to talk to, and where to look for them. I can’t promise they can fix you up. Maybe they’d know who could. But frankly—” She was looking back at me again, “I’d ask Daric before I’d try it alone, even if I hated his guts. There’s a reason the Deep End’s not on the city maps, you know. The Lack Market runs it. It’s got a whole different set of rules.”

  I nodded, my mouth pulling up. “Yeah, I know. But I grew up in a place like that. I know how the people there think. I know what they’re thinking if I need to.”

  “Every place is different,” she said, the worry line still etched deep between her silver brows. “But if that’s what you want.…” She shrugged when I didn’t say anything more. “You can’t go un
der dressed like that. You’d be dead before you got a hundred meters. Come on in the back. We’ve got plenty of gear you can pick through.”

  She led me through the wings of the stage and down a corridor, pushed open a door. Inside, it looked like a costume shop having a nervous breakdown—clothing in piles, hanging from hooks, strung up on racks, tacked to the walls. “Help yourself,” she said, wading in.

  I followed her into the room, breathing in the strange, musty smell of the place. “I never saw this many clothes in my entire life.”

  “You can be anything you want to be, here. Clothes make the man—into a woman, if you want. Or vice versa.” She tossed a long striped wrap-skirt at me, grinning. I shook my head and dropped the skirt. “Androgyny’s very big right now,” she said. “You’d look regular.”

  “If I have to run I might trip.” I picked up a loose yellow-brown tank top, held it out. Symbols from some pre-space language were printed inside a circle on the front of it. “Role-crossing was real popular in Quarro about five years back. Everything keeps coming around.…” I took off my jacket and shirt.

  “Maybe someday it’ll even mean something,” she murmured, kicking through mounds of cloth. “Quarro, huh?” She sounded impressed. “You must be a real trendsetter.”

  I laughed once, pulling on the tank top. It was long and baggy, but it let me move. “I was lucky if I had a shirt on my back, most of the time I lived there.”

  “Uh-huh.…” She picked up a hat made of feathers and put it on. “Being poor sucks, especially in a rich town.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  “In Oldcity, if you didn’t have a credit line, you couldn’t even leave. I never saw Quarro.”

  She made a face, suddenly feeling cold inside. “Being poor sucks, anywhere,” she said. “That’s why I wanted this club. After my five minutes of fame are over, I want to have somewhere to crawl home to.” I felt her remember her family suddenly; remember how her father had thrown her out for good the day she’d come home with silver skin.

  I nodded, thinking about Jule, and Siebeling. “Makes sense,” I said softly. I picked out some brown knit leggings and a heavy leather jacket. The jacket would give me some protection if I ran into a little trouble.… If I ran into a lot of trouble, even body armor wouldn’t save me. “How long you been with Daric?”

  “About a year and a half. I met him right after we went nova and started to play gigs above the waterline.” She was looking at me, but her gaze was somewhere else. “We were doing this exquisite private club, right up under the stars. Everybody there was some kind of famous, only they were all there for us … it was the most incredible night of my life. And then Daric came up to me, after the show. He gave me a silver rose, and he said, ‘You’ve waited all your life for me. Let me show you why.’” She was seeing him now, the way he’d looked to her that night: young and handsome, rich and confident. Remembering the way he’d looked at her—as if he’d never seen anyone more beautiful. Remembering the way he’d made her believe that every word he said was true.…

  I looked away from her face, sorry I’d asked. “How do you like his family?”

  Her mind snapped back to the present, and her smile turned black. “About as much as they like me. They scare the shit out of me.”

  I shook my head. “When I saw you with them, you looked like you were having a pretty good time raising their blood pressure.”

  She lifted her hand and made half a bow to me. “I’m an entertainer. It’s all part of the act, love.… Daric enjoys it far more than I do.” Her smiled softened. “I remember you, that night. You looked like you were in shock. Like you’d crashlanded on the wrong planet.”

  “I had,” I said.

  “I felt sorry for you, until you stood up to Daric. Then I figured you for a survivor, after all.”

  I looked down. “Yeah, that’s one thing I’m good at, anyway.”

  “Cat,” she said. I looked up. “Ask Daric. He can get what you want. I’ll even ask for you, if you want me to. He owes you that much.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t trust him.” I already knew too much, about politics.

  “I know what you think of him.” She tossed the feather hat away, impatient. “You’re right, he’s fucked up. But there really is a human being inside there—”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  She cocked her head at me. “Oh,” she said, finally. “You think you can’t trust any of us, huh? You think we’re all rotten, because you can see into our minds and read all our dirty little secrets—?”

  I looked down, picked up a pair of heavy gloves. “No. I don’t think that.…” I glanced up again, pulling them on. “I try not to, anyhow.”

  “Daric treats me better than anyone I’ve ever known.” She was thinking about all the things he’d done for her, given to her. Anything she wanted. He’d set her up with this club, like I’d figured—but she owned it, not him.

  “When he’s not treating you like shit.” I shrugged on the jacket. “Sure, why shouldn’t he? You’re beautiful, you’re famous, and his family thinks you’re trash. You’re everything he needs.”

  “You don’t know anything about his needs,” she said, frowning. “And you’re starting to piss me off.”

  I lifted my head. “What’s he ever done that’s decent, for anybody besides you?”

  She looked away, searching her memory. “The girl,” she said, after thinking a little longer than she probably would have liked. “A while back he brought a kid here, a young girl. Somebody’d beaten her up real bad.” Her face flinched. “He said he’d just found her on the street, and couldn’t leave her there. He asked us to help her. So we did.” She put her hands on her hips, as if she was waiting for me to congratulate her. “He didn’t do that out of anything but common humanity.” While inside her thoughts she was remembering something strange about the girl; how the kid had looked like a street nothing, dressed in greasy rags … except she’d had a face that looked like an exotic’s: eyes that were too green, with long slits for pupils. Like she’d had expensive cosmetic surgery done.…

  “A psion,” I said. “The way she looked—she was a psion.”

  “Who?” Argentyne shook her head. “You mean the kid?” Not asking me how I knew what the kid had looked like. She gave me one of those looks deadheads always gave me when I answered questions they hadn’t asked. “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t do anything—use her psi?”

  “Not while she was here.” She shook her head again. “But she wasn’t here that long. He brought her in one night; she was in shock, then. She couldn’t even move on her own. We patched her up and put her to bed upstairs. When I looked in the next morning she was already gone. I never saw her again. Daric asked about her; he really cared about what had happened to her, whether she was all right.”

  Daric taMing playing godsend to a freak. I didn’t know what the hell to make of that. Maybe she’d reminded him of Jule … except I thought he hated Jule. I wondered if he’d beaten her up himself. “I still can’t trust him to know about this. You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell him I was here.”

  She sighed. “If you’re that obsessed, who am I to stand in your way?” She looked at my clothes. “Out of all this, you had to choose that?” She waved a hand.

  I didn’t answer, my mind still hooked on the image of a lost girl with green eyes, so terrified that all she knew how to do was disappear. I wondered if she’d had any more idea of why somebody would want to beat the crap out of her than I’d ever had. Maybe nobody could ever really understand a thing like that.…

  “Cat,” Argentyne said, facing me without my noticing she’d moved.

  I stepped back, startled. Remembered she’d said something about my clothes. “Thanks for the clothes,” I mumbled. “Just tell me who to look for. I’ll get out of here and stop pissing you off.”

  “We could bodypaint you a little, first—” she of
fered, and I realized part of her was still trying to stall me. She was really afraid I’d go out of here and get my head kicked in.

  I turned away, annoyed. “No.” I gestured at the clothes. “I know what I’m doing.” I hesitated, turning back; managed a smile. “But thanks for caring whether I do or not.”

  She smiled too, resigned. “It’s my curse.” She tied a hank of green scarf around my head. “Come on.” She nodded, and started back toward the door.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE TUBE THAT ran under the bay from N’Yuk island to the island called Stat had been built nearly three hundred years ago. It hadn’t been intended to make stops along the way. But then they ran out of room up above, and the city had started oozing off the end of the land into the cold, dark waters of the harbor. Now most of the sea bottom between the islands was covered with a separate city, clear domes spreading like a mass of fish eggs over the silty muck, reclaiming it for the air-breathers.

  But nobody could call that part of town real desirable, and so like Oldcity it had filled up with the dregs, the losers and the users, the kind of people who slipped through holes in the combine nets—by choice, or because they couldn’t help themselves, and couldn’t find anybody else who wanted to help them either.

  The Tube made stops there now, and at the third one I got off. To reach the surface, I climbed about three hundred steps that smelled like piss, because the lift was out of order. The pilastered cavern of the station itself didn’t look so bad—the FTA managed the services here like it did in Federal Trade Districts everywhere. They did a pretty good job of it. And then they left the human flotsam who lived there to drift, instead of taking care of them too. They needed their pools of desperate, unskilled labor all over the galaxy for their press gangs to feed off of, to sell to the combines to do their dirty work.

  I stepped over a sick dog that lay panting at the top of the light-strung stairs, my hands clenched inside my jacket pockets as I looked around me at the graffiti and the garbage. I didn’t want to touch anything, have the greasy dirt rub off on me, stick to my skin, pollute me. I felt sick when I remembered how it had been once, when I’d been one of these people. When I hadn’t known where the filth stopped and my flesh started, and hadn’t even cared.…