Catspaw
Page 50
Now the humans had built their own Net, and it was technogenetic, cruder but stronger. And now they were using it to climb inexorably up the same ever-steepening evolutionary curve.… I thought about Elnear again: about the chosen few already on the brink of something unknowable … and all the systems within systems below them, the individual humans who had become the core—the soul, Elnear had said—of an evolving meta-being they called a combine, creating their future almost without realizing it.
Maybe they’d never take the final step, either; maybe for humans it would always be too hard. Maybe the fear of Otherness that was always there, inside a mind that could never really put itself in somebody else’s place, would always hold them back. Or maybe they’d make it just because they’d had to fight so hard simply to survive; because they’d never given up trying to bridge the impossible gulf between one human mind and another.…
I looked down at the fight scars on my knuckles, and out at the dawn again. Whatever happened to the human race, the Monument would be waiting here: a road sign, pointing toward an unimaginable future. Not a cemetery headstone, but a memorial to the death of Death.
I heard the soft scuff of someone’s footsteps behind me; looked up as Kissindre stopped beside me.
“A credit for your thoughts,” she said, almost whispering, with an embarrassed twitch in her smile.
I shook my head, smiling a little too. “Don’t waste your money.” She held her arms pressed tightly against her chest. She was wearing a thin, short-sleeved shirt, and I realized how much she was feeling the cold. “Sit down,” I said, suddenly feeling selfish, and sorry for it.
She sat on the warming rocks beside me, and there was no tension in her body, no yearning, no anticipation in her mind.…
And I knew that. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
I put my arm around her shoulders, but it was only to help her stay warm; something a friend would do. We sat together a while longer, like two friends, watching the day come in.
Books by Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen Cycle
The Snow Queen
World’s End
*+The Summer Queen
*Tangled Up in Blue
The Cat Novels
*+Psion
*Catspaw
*+Dreamfall
*+Heaven Chronicles
Phoenix in the Ashes (story collection)
Eyes of Amber (story collection)
The Random House Book of Greek Myths
* denotes a Tor book
+ forthcoming
“Somebody in that room is brain-dead.”
Braedee’s laughter rattled up and down the hall of the townhouse. “Almost everybody in that room is brain-dead.”
“I mean it literally, goddamn it! He’s a total burnout running on somebody else’s ’ware. There’s nobody in there.” I didn’t wait for Braedee to step on my heels before I went back into the party. Scanning with my mind, I found Elnear taMing. She was standing with Daric and Lazuli. I felt her subvocalize a call to her Security people as she spotted me.
“Ma’am, I think you’re in danger.” I reached for her hand.
“Where is my Security?” She stiffened. “What are you doing here?”
The burnout was coming toward us. He almost spilled his drink; finished it in a desperate gulp, his eyes riveted on us. The drink. He started forward as he saw us begin to move.… The drink.
I shoved Lady Elnear, knocking her into Daric and Lazuli, knocking them all flat. I landed on top of them in a tangle of elbows and knees—just as the burnout stranger exploded.…
“Complex, deftly woven … an engrossing and satisfying read.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A rich tale of palace intrigue that is both crisp and captivating.… Catspaw also comes with enough plot twists to keep you on edge.”
—Providence Journal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan D. Vinge has been described as “one of the reigning queens of science fiction” and is renowned for creating lyrical human dramas in fascinatingly complex feature settings. She has won two Hugo awards, one for her novel The Snow Queen. Vinge is the author of World’s End, Tangled Up in Blue, and The Summer Queen, sequels to The Snow Queen. Also in her series about the character Cat are Psion, a prequel in which the character is introduced, and Dreamfall, which Publishers Weekly called a “richly detailed and suspenseful sequel to Catspaw.” She also has written the bestselling Return of the Jedi Storybook and other film adaptations, as well as the Random House Book of Greek Myths. Ms. Vinge is currently working on LadySmith, a novel set during the Bronze Age in Western Europe. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
CATSPAW
Copyright © 1988 by Joan D. Vinge
All rights reserved.
This book was originally published by Warner Books in 1988.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York. NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vinge, Joan D.
Catspaw / Joan D. Vinge.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-765-30341-8 (alk. paper)
1. Telepathy—Fiction. 2. Bodyguards—Fiction. 3. Rich people—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title
PS3572.I53 C3 2002
813'.54—dc21
2002028579
First Tor Edition: November 2002
eISBN 9781466829770
First eBook edition: September 2012