“What’s your plan?” She didn’t move, just mumbled into her curled-up arms. “You gonna get me drunk and then take advantage?”
“No. I’m just offering you water.”
She nodded.
When he put his arm around her to sit her upright and hold the cup of water to her lips she winced at his touch. The cold liquid must have hit all the nerves in her teeth. She flung her head back and sprayed droplets all over the floor. There was a heady cocktail of chemicals in her system—including Mother Ramona’s—that she’d be better off without.
He’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to resort to the Amfital that Mother Ramona had given him as a precautionary measure. He’d used it himself once, years ago, thinking it was harmless enough, then he’d used it again. After the third time he’d thrown the rest away, but it still brought a shiver to his skin at the thought of it.
He filled the bathtub, took the packet from his pocket, tore open the corner and sprinkled powder in. It fizzed and turned the warm water slightly pink as it dissolved. It smelled of hothouse flowers with a tang of citrus.
He stripped down to the waist, so he didn’t get his last shirt soaked and stained, and tried to stand Cara up to undress her. The second time her knees buckled he laid her back on the bed and began to strip off her clothes. She swung her fist at his head, missed, and almost hit herself on the rebound.
“I hope you realize I wouldn’t do this for just anybody,” he said, more to himself than her. He got down to the last layer, but he needn’t have worried; she wasn’t much of a turn-on. In this condition she was more like a helpless child.
He finished peeling off her sweat-soaked clothes, then scooped her up, carried her into the bathroom, and lowered her into the bath. She began to panic, splashing and wriggling, arching her back and making it difficult for him to hold onto her. The bath was deep enough to float in, so he daren’t let her go. In her state she’d slip under, and it would only take a few drops of this stuff sucked into her lungs to close down her breathing altogether. He felt a blast of raw panic from her, implant to implant, and shut his receptors down.
“It’s all right. It’ll make you feel much better. Come on, trust me. Relax. Let go. That’s it. Good girl.”
She began to respond, though whether it was exhaustion or the soporific effect of the warm drug-saturated water was difficult to tell.
“Is that better?”
Her only reply was a vague, “Hmm,” but it was a comfortable sound.
The pink water began to turn viscous, and the arm supporting Cara’s semiconscious body felt numb. He pulled it out from under her as the gel solidified enough to support her weight and rinsed his skin with the fresher spray in the cubicle, flexing his fingers to restore feeling. He returned to the bath and scooped the warm jelly over the bits of her body that had been uncovered as the water had begun to thicken. He piled it onto her breasts and around her shoulders and throat and then up and over her ears and head, making sure that it was massaged down through her hair to her scalp, especially over the bruise. Finally, he smeared it across her cheeks, chin, and forehead and waited until her eyes closed and all the tension had gone out of her. Then he covered her eyelids. Only her mouth and nostrils were clear.
He had at least twenty-four hours before she came round again. Time to see Crowder, meet with the head of the settlers, and then catch up on some much needed rest. No, make that the other way round. Rest first. He put the do-not-disturb code on the outside door and called reception to reinforce that. Then he dragged the bed over to where he could see Cara through the open door. Satisfied that he’d done all he could for now, he rolled onto the bed and fell deeply asleep.
• • •
Max Constant’s first space flight was a real letdown. He’d wanted to see that iconic view of the Earth as a pale blue orb. Unfortunately all he saw was the inside of a tube, the anxious faces of his neighbors on the seats at either side, and the back of the seat in front of him, barely a handspan from his face. Someone had made a remark about flying cattle class and someone else had come up with: “Quiet in the cheap seats.”
That was the truth of it. They were being transferred from Earth to Chenon as cheaply as possible. They’d spend a few months on Chenon in a training camp and then be frozen in cryo for the long journey to Olyanda.
Well, he hadn’t paid for first class, so what was he expecting? Director Lorient and his family didn’t get to say good-bye to Earth properly, either. Their seats were just a few rows in front of his own. Mrs. Lorient had looked pensive when they’d boarded, but their son, Danny, had been grinning broadly and saying hello to as many people as he could before his mother nudged him into his seat.
Max had grinned back at Danny—the kid was hard to resist—but then as everyone settled, he compressed his lips. Here he was, on the point of no return. Had he made the right decision?
This was a sensible move for him. He’d committed all his savings. Now, if only he could take that final step and commit his heart. He felt as though he’d left unfinished business behind him. Or rather, unfinished business had left him behind. When Leila had walked out of his life, he’d sworn never to fall for another psi-tech. It wasn’t as if Leila was his first, either. He should have been more wary, but somehow he always seemed drawn to them. Settling on a colony that had none was perhaps a pretty extreme way of breaking the cycle, but after Leila, he’d just wanted to get away.
He’d admitted to the recent breakup, but not told the Ecolibrians that his ex was a Psi-4 Telepath. His counselor had warned him that in going forward there would be strands of his former life which would anchor him to the past. He must accept them as memories. The only important thing now was his new life on Olyanda.
“Ready for takeoff.” The message boomed over the speakers, and there was a general hubbub of trepidation. They’d been warned what to expect, but the pressure from the upward thrust still came as a surprise. It was over quickly, though, and then he got the full effect of the strange weightlessness, which was mitigated by the snug harness.
He needed to pee. No, he didn’t. They’d been given suppressant shots since they wouldn’t be allowed out of their seats for twenty-three hours until they reached Chenon. It would be over quickly, though. Pretty soon the cabin would be flooded with a gentle sleep gas, a standard tactic when taking space-virgins through the Folds, apparently.
He was still thinking about the sleep gas when he woke up. Now he really did want to pee. How long had it been? He glanced down at his handpad, something he was hanging onto for as long as possible. Twenty-four hours. Oh, they were actually down on the ground. His first space flight and he’d slept through it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chenon. Please exit as directed. There are fresher facilities on the concourse.” The announcer cleared her throat. “Lots of fresher facilities.”
A small cheer went round the cabin.
• • •
Cara feels her grip on reality fading in and out. She has a jumbled impression of the last few days, but she doesn’t trust her memory. She remembers running from something or somebody. There’s a white-faced woman and—is she really married? No, that’s ridiculous.
She doesn’t even seem to be able to communicate now, either mentally or verbally. Her head is one throbbing ache.
She’s felt like this before.
There’s a memory hidden below the surface of her mind, but it refuses to reveal itself. She tries to catch it, but it sinks deeper and slips away. She follows it into a dark building. Her heart pounds in its cage of gristle and bone. Maybe around the next corner . . .
She’s in a corridor, and there’s a door with a small clear panel in it. She doesn’t want to look, but she has to.
She peers through and sees a bank of machines; herself in a padded chair, in a movement restraint, and there’s someone in the room with her. A woman, thin and dark. The woman has a name.
The woman has a name.
The woman has a name.
Name: Donida McLellan.
Place: Sentier-4.
There’s someone else, too. Someone she knows well, but . . .
The door and window vanish. She’s in the room now. She’s in the chair, and the machines are alive inside her head, crawling through blood vessels and slithering across synapses. She doesn’t want to look at the woman.
Pinprick eyes.
Implants meshing.
Stare.
The woman is confusion. The darkness is inside. She tries to look away, but the walls recede. There’s nowhere to hide.
She must get out. Out of the chair. Out of the room.
Out.
She sees her own face at the window. White. Eyes like bruises. Looking in.
Out. That’s where she needs to be.
Out.
That’s where she needs to be.
That’s where she needs . . .
She’s outside the room again. She turns and runs toward the light; running blindly, stumbling forward.
Someone catches her.
Ben.
He lays her down gently and she’s bathed in warmth and sunlight. Her body floats. Breathe in. Breathe out. The room and the chair fade, getting smaller and smaller until they’re barely a memory.
Then no memory at all.
She relaxes.
• • •
Victor Lorient sat stiffly in the highback chair in the lobby of the Gateway Hotel in Arkhad City, just a few months to go to achieve his life’s ambition of setting up an Ecolibrian colony far away from Earth and the genetically engineered psi-techs. He waited for his guest with eyes fixed on the entrance. His dark wavy hair drooped fashionably over his forehead, but he detracted from the effect by running his fingers through it to push it back. He attracted covert attention from more than one of the women passing. Victor didn’t care; Rena was waiting up in the suite with Danny, and she was all he’d ever needed. Better get this over with quickly so he could return to them. He tapped the tip of his first and second fingers against his thumb in a little two-time rhythm, then stopped himself, reluctant to show anything that might be classed as a nervous tic.
Apart from the hologram at the press conference, he’d not seen Gabrius Crowder in person since the initial Olyanda agreement had been finalized. Victor had left Jack Mario to deal with the psi-techs whenever necessary.
It wouldn’t be possible to keep his distance for the next phase of the project, however. Now that they’d transferred from Earth to Chenon, he’d be forced to deal with the psi-techs who’d been assigned to take them to Olyanda. There was no choice. Space law was complex and, though he’d studied it for loopholes, there were none. They were stuck with the psi-techs, like it or not.
After early failures, the Pretoria Convention bound megacorporations and planetary governments alike. All new colonies must have a technical setup team for a minimum period of one year. Victor had accepted the condition initially without realizing that all the setup teams were psi-techs. Safest, they said. More efficient, they said. Better communication, they said. Victor privately thought it was mainly to line the pockets of the corporations providing the service. They could charge through the nose for psi-tech personnel on the grounds they cost so much to implant and train.
He wasn’t entirely sure about Ben Benjamin. The journalists at the press conference had said something about Hera-3, but it had been glossed over in his file, so it probably wasn’t important. Some row over platinum. The first mission commander he’d been offered was a Psi-1 Telepath, for goodness sake. Benjamin seemed like a more acceptable replacement. At least the man was a Navigator, which was marginally more tolerable than someone who could get inside your head.
Victor shuddered. Even so, he must have been crazy to agree to this meeting so soon after landing. The journey had been draining, and his body clock was completely out of sync. Chenon’s double-length days and slightly higher gravity threw him off balance and made him nauseous. It wasn’t the best time to confront the enemy. He’d prefer to feel he was in full control of his senses before facing any psi-techs at close quarters.
He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Taken one by one, his features were rather too big for his face, but they gave him presence, made people listen. To anyone else, that nose would have been a disaster, a reason for corrective surgery, but Victor wore it like a badge of office. If nothing else, it seemed to prove to his followers that his genes were natural, unlike psi-techs who represented genetic and micro-cellular engineering at its rampant worst. How could you trust someone who could go searching around in your head?
He, of all people, knew how bad they could be.
His father, a strict Ecolibrian all his life, had taught him to imagine numbers in the presence of a psi-tech; pictures of numbers; sounds of numbers, jumbled and chaotic. That would mean they couldn’t get at your innermost secret thoughts.
He’d once thought his father a fundy nutter, had kicked over the traces briefly, gone to the other side for a while, but now he knew. He thought of numbers all the time. The bastards wouldn’t ever get inside his head again.
But even he couldn’t sense who was psi-tech and who wasn’t. That was what made them so damned dangerous.
He’d been one of the campaigners for the tattoo law in his third year at the University of Western Australia. On the night of the vote he’d attended a preemptive victory celebration and had drunk something more than alcohol. Next morning he’d woken with a hangover and found a prominent blue “Psi” drawn on his forehead in indelible marker. The news that the vote had gone against them had sent him to the washroom where he’d frantically scrubbed and scraped at the mark until his skin bled and hot tears of shame had run down his cheeks.
So many psi-techs on Chenon. He hoped his people appreciated the effort he was making on their behalf. Nothing short of freeing the Ecolibrians in the long-term would induce him to work with the abominations now.
A hulk of a man approached and headed straight for Victor’s chair. Crowder looked even less appealing now than he had done on Earth or via hologram. Victor tamed a shiver that was threatening to become a visible shake, stood up, and took the proffered hand.
“I am a man of principle, Mr. Crowder. I make no pretense of being comfortable around you psi-techs.”
“I’m not psi-tech, Director Lorient.” Crowder smiled as though Victor had not insulted him and sat down. “Though, of course, I have a basic implant to enable me to receive.”
How could he tell if the man was lying? Numbers. Think of numbers.
Crowder accepted a cup of coffee from a waiter. Victor left his cooling after a sip that confirmed that it wasn’t what he was used to at home. He’d been told that CFB was the best he could hope for in the colonies, but this was disgusting. He was glad Crowder was picking up the tab. He lived in hope of being able to grow real coffee beans on Olyanda. Around them, the brightly decorated hotel was beginning to fill with people. It was the long twilight time between day and night, and out in the city the lights were building automatically as dusk deepened.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Crowder said. “I know you’ve only just arrived. You must be tired. Adjusting to Chenon takes some time; our gravity; our long days.”
“Unpleasant, but temporary, thank goodness.”
“Ah, here’s Commander Benjamin.” Crowder turned as a tall, dark man, severe in a buddysuit, entered the room.
Victor shivered. He’d been told Benjamin was barely telepathic at all, but how could he be sure? Eighteen, twenty-four, three, four hundred and ninety-seven.
“Commander Benjamin.” Victor shook Benjamin’s offered hand without removing his glove; rude, but he was sure psi-techs were used to it. Not everyone trusted them. He saw Benjamin’s mouth twitch up at one corner. He’d noticed the slight and decided to ignore it. All well and good.
“Director Lorient, pleased to meet you. I’ve only just been assigned
to the Olyanda mission, but let me assure you I’ll be doing everything in my power to make your first year as smooth as it can be.”
“I’m sure you will, Commander. I have . . . every faith in Mr. Crowder’s choice.”
“As soon as you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to show you and your family around our headquarters and introduce you to some of the people who’ll be working for you on Olyanda.”
Victor felt a rising tide of panic. “No!” It came out a little stronger than he had expected, so he covered it up by pretending to sip another mouthful of the piss that passed for coffee. “Jack Mario’s our chief administrator. He’ll do all our liaison work.” Another sip. “I’ll be at the facility you’ve provided, working with the settlers. I have . . . organizational matters to attend to.”
It was a cop-out. Crowder and Benjamin probably knew it as well as he did, but at least it saved face. Forty-three, fifty-six, nine hundred and forty-seven. Numbers, think of numbers, and dream of a new planet on the first day after the psi-techs returned to Chenon. Then it would all be worth it.
Chapter Eight
INTRODUCTIONS
Cara awoke. It was quite a surprise. Finding she was alive and pain-free brought a surge of joy followed immediately by cold fear. She fought down panic. Numb. Unable to move. Unable to communicate. Total paralysis. What was wrong with her? Ari. Damn him. Had he won after all?
It was dark. Pitch-dark. Darker than the middle of the night. Where was she?
*Chenon.*
Of course she was.
No, wait a minute, her own brain hadn’t supplied the answer to that question.
*Ben?*
*Welcome back.*
*Can’t move. Can’t see.*
*Don’t panic. It’s the Amfital.*
He offered his own vision and she saw herself through his eyes; the distorted shape of a naked woman in a bathtub, submerged in something pink. He began to scrape off the gel, first from her eyes and face, then her ears and hair, throat and shoulders. She could see his hands working over her body, but it wasn’t remotely sexual. She couldn’t feel anything. Her skin was numb. Weird. Amfital was illegal on most planets except under medical supervision. She could see why.
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