Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  “How is Argentyne?” he asked, almost civilly.

  “Satisfied,” I answered, mostly to annoy him.

  He frowned. He poured himself a drink from the liquor carafe on the table in front of him, and gulped it down.

  “Why don’t you drop the bleeding-inside crap?” I said. “She doesn’t mean anything to you. Nobody does.”

  His head snapped up. The pain anger jealousy gnawing at his gut was real enough. “You,” he said, his finger quivering as it pointed me out, “are a nameless bastard. You are not fit to judge me. You will not sit there and tell me what I think or feel or want in my own house!”

  I flinched as his fury scraped my raw nerves. I kept my eyes on the carafe and cups on the tray in front of him. The tray was moving, slowly, around the table. There was a kind of continental drift at work in the table’s heart; my hands could feel it, a faint vibration under what looked like a solid surface, carrying everything invisibly toward me. I watched them come, hypnotized. “Plate tectonics,” Daric murmured, and I laughed out loud before I could stop myself. My hands rattled on the tabletop. They reminded me of his hands, as if somehow his hands had gotten attached to my body.

  Daric looked at me, under control again, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and disgust.

  “Fuck you, Gentleman Daric,” I said.

  “Have a drink,” he offered, as the carafe reached me, and stopped.

  I filled a cup and looked at it. Daric’s tension level jumped as I picked it up. I glanced at him, watched him take another swallow from his own cup; felt him react to the kick of high-proof alcohol. There was nothing in the liquor that didn’t belong there. He relaxed again, even though I hadn’t drunk anything; he didn’t care if I drank his liquor or not.

  I took a sip, felt it numb the inside of my mouth, burn a track down my throat, deaden my aching stomach. It felt good. Right then drinking acid would have felt good. I drank some more.

  And then I started to get dizzy. The room began to run and flow as I sat staring in disbelief. “It was safe … How…?” I forced the words out; it seemed like the longest speech I’d ever made.

  “The cup wasn’t.” Daric shrugged. He smiled. His face was melting. “It has to look good, you know, for Stryger. Trust me.”

  I didn’t trust him. I fell face down onto the table.

  * * *

  When I came to again, I was somewhere else. There was a dirty fibroid floor pressing hard against the side of my face. I lifted my head, blinking. I had a headache. The light here was white and shadowless, not like the dim half-light of the room where Daric and I had been hiding from each other’s hatred. It was a square box with one hard, ugly chair and a hard metal bedframe set on a storage base. One door, shut. No windows. I could hear a ventilator running somewhere; a wheezing scream that went on and on, that sounded like the machine was being killed by this place. For a minute I thought I was in Oldcity. And then I thought I was having a nightmare.

  I wasn’t alone in it. Daric was leaning against the door. And Stryger was standing beside him, hidden inside so much drab, ungodly clothing that I had to touch his mind to be sure I was really seeing him. “You see,” Daric said, to one or the other of us, or both. “Here he is.”

  I tried to push myself up, fell back on my face again, because I couldn’t make my hands work. My hands were locked in binders behind my back. I rolled onto my side, got up finally, using just my legs. As I staggered to my feet one foot jerked out from under me, and I almost fell again. One of my ankles was tied to the bedframe by a piece of rope. “You son of a bitch,” I said to Daric, and the choking panic in my voice was real.

  He smiled. The tiny shrug of his shoulders told me, It has to look good.

  “Hello, Cat,” Stryger murmured, his voice soft and almost warm, as if we were having a perfectly normal conversation, as if I wasn’t standing here like this—like some kind of human sacrifice. He began to take off the shapeless, hooded coat that made him look twice his size. My own jacket was gone; so were my boots. All I had on was a tunic and jeans, and they weren’t going to give me much protection. And then I remembered the symb box. I’d put it into my jacket; and my jacket wasn’t in the room. I froze, trying to make my mind hold together while I called on the link, not letting myself think about what would happen if there was no answer. But the familiar grid of energy tilled my inner sight like a streetmap. I followed it, found the symb box ready for me, locked in … Daric was wearing it. I forced myself to take a deep breath, and another. Then I sent what was left of my concentration out through the white noise of the ventilator and my own fear in one last sweep, searching for Mikah.

  He was there. Somewhere outside, nearby, close enough. He’d tracked me here, wherever here was; as good as his word. I felt him jump as I goosed him with my relief. I fed him a flood of images about where I was and what was about to happen.

  And then I broke contact, because I realized Stryger had gone on talking to me, and now he was waiting for me to answer.

  He’d asked me to tell him why I thought God had allowed me to be born.

  “What?” I said, because even knowing what he’d asked me, that was all the answer I could think of.

  He repeated the question. “I’m very interested in your religious views,” he said softly. “I’ve had to wait such a long time for this opportunity to talk to you about them.” He was leaning on his staff, shining in the white light; as if he really had made half a lifetime’s journey to reach this stinking rathole room, all to talk religion with me.

  “Then why this—?” I asked, feeling the binders cut into my wrists, tightening more as I jerked my hands. I tried not to look at him like he was crazy.

  He sighed. “Because it’s necessary. Now, the question is, why are humans and Hydrans so similar that interspecies miscegenation can even occur? Why has God permitted our pure stock to become polluted with abnormal genes? Why were you born—a halfbreed, the degenerate spawn of an unnatural act? As a warning? As an example?” I felt him goading me; goading his own hatred.

  “There isn’t any God,” I said. “If there was, you wouldn’t exist.” I glanced at Daric; he was backed into the corner by the door now, with fear-sweat shining on his face. Smiling. “None of us would.”

  Stryger moved his hands; the bottom end of his staff shot out, tangled in my legs. I fell down, hard, with no way to stop it. I lay there for a long minute, with the pain in my bruised legs throbbing up through my body, before I rolled over and pushed onto my knees again.

  He was still standing quietly, leaning on his staff again as if it had been God’s hand and not his own that had struck me down. He actually believed it had been God’s hand.

  I managed to get up, and backed away toward the bed. I sat down on it, sending a silent finger of thought into his brain while I did. I hadn’t counted on the binders: I was going to need everything I had to keep from getting maimed.

  “I realize you cannot be expected to behave like a civilized person,” he said. The velvet on his voice was wearing away now; the naked fist was showing through. “But I think you can give me a better answer than that.”

  I made a face. “I don’t know why I’m alive. I don’t know why I’m a halfbreed. Maybe my mother was gang-raped by deadheads.”

  The staff flashed out at my head. I felt him move and ducked; but it came back at me before I could get my balance again and hit me from behind, knocking me off the bed. I landed on my face. I sat up again on the floor; got to my knees, and then my feet. It took longer this time, because it was harder to do. Blood was leaking out of my nose; my mouth felt like raw meat. I stared at the grid still shining and alive inside my eyes, made sure it was getting every detail of how much it hurt. (Why—?) I thought, because I couldn’t catch my breath to ask him why; because I wondered what he’d do. (Why do you want to do this to me?)

  “Filth!” he shrieked. The staff end hit the floor with a crack, and then it hit me across the chest, staggering me. I fell down again. “N
ever touch me with your filthy—” He broke off, swallowing the word, shuddering. And then, with what almost sounded like grief in his voice, he said, “I don’t want to do this.…” And the worst part was that some part of him really didn’t. I watched him come forward, a step at a time. He held out his hand to me, as if he really wanted to help me up. “But God has shown me that it is necessary. You have shown me yourself that you deserve punishment. Your very existence is a blasphemy.… The Hydran civilization was corrupt. They set themselves up to be in God’s place; that was why their civilization fell. It fell from grace. Only full-blooded humans are God’s children, recognizing their role as it was meant to be. Only Earth is pure.”

  I looked up at him, at his outstretched hand, at the white, pitiless light ringing him with aura … trying not to look at the staff. “That’s a lot of shit.”

  The staff leaped up and clipped me under the chin, knocking me back into the metal base of the bed, sending me down with a headful of stars. I pushed my way up the side of the bedframe, fell onto the stinking mattress foam again, dazed and gasping. I hoped he hadn’t broken my jaw. The welts rising on me felt as thick as my arm. I wondered how I could have missed his move on me that time so completely.

  “We’re not…” I mumbled, and spat, grateful that my mouth still worked, “… not the different ones. Hydrans were all over.… It’s you. You’re the mutants … misfits … defectives, failures…!” Blood dribbled down my chin.

  “Damn you—” he whispered, as something tore like rotten cloth inside his brain. And then I saw, too late, what his most terrible fear was: The fear that I was right. In the vision he’d had so long ago, when that accident had left him clinically dead—the vision he’d believed had been sent to him by God—he’d dreamed that his mind had left his body. It had hovered over him, and then crossed the impossible threshold into the minds of the people working to save him. He’d heard them speak—known their thoughts, almost known their every secret, like God. And then they’d saved him, and pulled him back into his body where he belonged. And when he’d come to, he’d known that he’d never have that feeling of pure, godlike power again … because he wasn’t a psion. And I felt the hunger for the Gift he could never have eating him alive, and his insane hatred of the ones who had it by birthright. Oh God, I thought, and wished I’d thought of something else.

  “I think…” he murmured, staring down at me with mindless sorrow, “you will profit from this.” The end of his staff caught me in the stomach, doubling me over, and then came down hard across the side of my face, smashing my ear.

  I lay where I’d fallen face-down on the putrid foam, listening to myself moan; hoping that if I lay still he’d let me rest for a minute. More blood was running down my neck and into my eye. I couldn’t wipe it off. I wished head wounds didn’t bleed so damn much. I couldn’t hear out of the ear he’d hit; it was full of blood. I wondered why I was having so much trouble reading him. That wasn’t right. Maybe the symb box was taking up too much of my concentration. But it had to come first, or else the rest of this had no point at all.… It was getting harder all the time to remember what the point of anything was.

  I sat up, my ears still ringing; let him hit me in the ribs and knock me off the bed again. He didn’t even give me a chance to roll over this time before the staff whacked me in the balls. I folded up, retching, and he hit me across the kidneys. (Daric—!) I tried to form the thought, to reach his mind with it. I couldn’t. Too little control left, too much pain—the pain leaked out of me like blood and into their minds, until I heard Stryger screaming at me again, hitting me over and over to make me stop hurting out loud. “Daric!” I was sobbing now, but I didn’t care. “Daric—”

  “Sojourner…” Daric said, his voice sounding hollow and far away. “Sojourner!” Louder, almost frightened, this time. He came toward us, inching into my line of sight; clamped his hand on Stryger’s arm, pulling him around. “I—I want him for a moment.…”

  Stryger froze, stared at him; moved away from me like he was in a trance, letting Daric crouch down beside me. “Enough?” Daric whispered. I nodded, shutting my eyes.

  “No…” he said hoarsely, “I don’t think so.” I opened my eyes. He rubbed a finger across my torn lips; it came away red. He put it into his mouth and sucked it, smiling. He straightened up again. “By the way—” His finger swam down toward my eyes again, and there was something else on its tip. “I think this belongs to you—?” I squinted. It was a drug patch. The one from behind my ear. He’d taken it off me after I’d passed out. My psi had been slowly going dead on me all this time.

  He flicked the patch away. I swore, floundering, trying to get my legs under me, trying to see where it had gone. He kicked me in the stomach, collapsing me again, and left me there. (Mikah—!) I threw everything I had into the call, praying that now, now when I really needed it, my Gift would come back to me on its own. But it didn’t. “Mikah—!” I screamed it, raw-voiced. And then Stryger brought his staff down on me again, and I just screamed.

  I tried to kick him, tried to crawl away, but it was all useless. He used his staff on me like an artist, now that I was down and helpless … used it to cause the most pain in the most ways, the most places, hurting me everywhere but never doing enough damage at once to let me lose consciousness. Somewhere in the middle of it, the lines of the grid inside my head went out. And I realized my backup was gone, I was alone in this nameless place with the two people who hated me most; two people who wanted me dead more than anything else in the universe right now. And this thing had already gone too far, way beyond the plan. Stryger was going to kill me—and Daric would lick my bloody corpse, and nobody would ever know.…

  There was nothing left to hold onto as the pain drove me under, drowning me in fear, drowning me in memory.… I was back on the streets again, seven or eight years old with an empty hole in my brain where my past should have been, hungry and cold. And a man who sometimes gave me handouts said, Come on in. I thought I knew the streets, knew the rules, knew what I was doing. I’d never heard bad talk about him. But up in his room he’d dropped his pants and told me what he wanted me to do to him. I said I didn’t want to, and his face went from smiling and soft to ugly with rage faster than I could think. He pulled a knife, and with it pressed against my throat, he said, Do it or I’ll kill you. And I did it, whimpering and sick, but thinking if I did it I could go. I’d never heard he’d killed anybody, if I did it he’d let me go.…

  But he wouldn’t let me go. I begged him, I tried to fight, but he cut me and ripped off my clothes. He pinned me down on the bed and started doing things to me. I told myself it was only some babyfucker getting his fix, it didn’t mean anything as long as I was still alive when it was over. And the things got worse and worse, hurting me until I cried out; and when I did he started to beat me, shouting it was all my fault, like I’d made him do this—until I was hurt and bleeding everywhere, but still it was only pain and it couldn’t go on forever. And then he rolled me onto my stomach and climbed on top of me. Naked and helpless under his weight, I screamed as a kind of pain I’d never known existed tore something apart in my insides. “Oh God, stop—!” I screamed and screamed for somebody to save me but there was nobody at all who heard my screams and cared.

  And it wasn’t stopping. My screams turned hoarse, my sobs became heaves of vomit; it went on and on, until all that was left was the truth … blind with pain, with the black pit opening up to swallow me, I knew at last that the river of wetness that rushed through me was all my blood, that I was never going to get out of this room, that oh God I was dying right here, it was over, over, right now going down, down, into the blackness.…

  * * *

  Noise exploded the room around me, exploded my living nightmare. And then there was silence, even though inside my head I was still screaming. The blows stopped coming; even though it didn’t stop the pain. I opened the one eye that would still open, blinking in the naked whiteness, watching as reality unrolled l
ike a threedy show in front of me: Stryger standing still, gaping at something, someone standing where the door had been, but wasn’t any more. Daric sidling away along the wall like a spider, as Mikah stepped into the room.

  Mikah stopped dead as he saw me. His eyes squinted, and his head moved slowly from side to side; but whatever happened on his face was hidden behind the faceshield of his armor. He raised his head again, looking at Stryger. “So,” he muttered, the words thick with anger as he glanced at Daric and back at Stryger. “Two-timing me again, you lousy freak.…” With some part of my brain that was still half working, I realized that he was covering my ass, making it look good.

  Stryger was still gaping, his eyes getting wider and wider with a disbelief that was so total he couldn’t breathe. He looked like he was seeing the devil in human form, and maybe he thought he was. Maybe he was right. I started to laugh, or maybe cry.

  Mikah moved forward, coming toward me.

  Stryger shut his mouth as Mikah shoved him aside, making him stagger … as he realized Mikah was only human, and a witness to what he’d done here. He lifted his staff—

  Mikah stunshot him without even turning back to look; Stryger collapsed like a broken leg. Mikah crouched down, his mailed fist opening, reaching out toward me.

  “No … don’…” The words bubbled out of my mouth in a bloody froth; my body cringed away from his touch, my mind still full of shattered glass.

  He pulled his hand back, raised his faceguard so I could see his face. “Cat,” he said, “it’s Mikah.”

  “Mikah … I didn’ lie t’ you.…”

  “About what?” He looked confused.

  “Gettin’ free.…”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Don’ let ’em beat me no more.”