“I don't know,” Jae told them irritably. He was getting in one of his moods again and he fought against the feeling, trying to remain rational. He should have triggered his tranks to dose him before he made this call. “The woman is a problem. She's going to be a bigger problem.”
“I knew it,” Stoan muttered.
“What do you have, Jae?” Andri asked.
“We know she hasn't tried anything on Wiley,” Jae said. “He always has a relay set up so that if one of his minds gets controlled, the others will have time enough to warn someone before the controller can take them over as well.”
“No alarm yet,” Andri said as she double-checked screens from the information padd that hovered over her left hand. “Are we sure that this woman is trouble? I want to trust Londo's judgment when it comes to people.”
“Londo is in no state to judge character,” Jae told her. “He's in love, flat-out, don't-tell-me-anything-I-don't-want-to-know love. And lust. He's not listening to sense right now.”
“If that's not mind control—” Stoan began.
Andri regarded him sourly. “I've always suspected you didn't have a romantic bone in your body,” she said. “Why can't Londo fall in love? If what the boards are saying is true—”
“It's true,” Jae told her. “And apparently the two of them can still have sex even now.”
“Convenient,” Stoan said. “And I find it highly unlikely. Have you considered that it's all a telepathic illusion?”
“I don't think it is. She can manipulate his invulnerability, but it's not done on a conscious level. He touches her as if he were a norm.”
“Lucky girl.” The corner of Andri's mouth quirked. She caught a lock of her short, pinkish hair and twirled it around one finger thoughtfully. “If you ever find out how they do it, I know a lot of women who'd be very interested in learning the technique.”
Jae looked her up and down measuringly. “You come over to my room after I'm out of quarantine and we can experiment, maybe figure out ourselves how they do it,” he teased.
“You wish,” Andri fired back, obviously not really interested.
“People,” Stoan interrupted crossly. “Haven't you had every woman in the Legion yet, Jae?”
Andri challenged Jae with a smile, “He hasn't had me.”
“That's another thing I respect you for,” Stoan told her. “Now back on track. We've been researching mind controllers, Jae. Up till now they've had to have a brain implant in their telepathic centers.”
Jae shook his head. “She doesn't have the standard obvious implants. But how do we know that that's the only way to do it? Lately the Empire has been focusing on mind control. Maybe they've come up with a new technique.”
“I wouldn't put it past them,” Stoan growled.
They sat for a few moments in silent thought. Andri was the first to speak. “So what if all we're doing is conjuring up bogeymen? Afraid of shadows in a dark room? What if the woman's exactly what she purports to be?”
“A Terran witchdoctor?” Stoan asked sourly. “Oh come on, Andri.”
“Do you have any other ideas? Besides her being a controller? Who's she working for? What's her motive?”
“Controlling Valiant is enough of a motive for anyone,” Stoan replied. “Control Valiant and you have how much power behind you? Control Valiant and you could take over a sector. Not the AffSys, but probably the Terran Sector. It's primitive enough. And it's right next to the Empire.
“My bet's on Yanist-Glory being behind this. The timing's right. We've been waiting for final reports from operatives behind the border to hold a major meeting about this. It's an all-out security threat to the AffSys. Mind control is a threat to every rational being.”
He pointed at Jae. “You watch yourself as well. If she should control Valiant, Neutrino…and even one of Mem-Bazer's minds, she could pose a direct threat to the AffSys. I wonder if that wasn't her plan in the first place.”
Andri nodded, her hands clasped in front of herself. “And yet,” she said, “what if she's just another of those Terran megas? That world has far too many megas. Where do they come from? Londo and Hal have convinced us that there's no mega-based genetic experiments going on there. What if she's just another freak para? What if she just got involved with Londo by a coincidence? It would be understandable that if he ever got…” She paused.
“Laid,” Jae said and she rolled her eyes but continued.
“If Lon ever got laid, and especially if he had the prospect of continuing to get laid, he'd let himself fall in love with the woman. Everyone knows he's got that sentimental streak. Surely it would follow, wouldn't it? I've noticed that Hal has some peculiar ideas about love and sex as well. Lon could have picked it up from him. Shards, he probably picked it up from Mike and Ruth. They've been married forever, I think.”
“And yet look at what Hal married,” Stoan said. “So you think that this is Lon's sentimental side taking over, Andri? And you, Jae, is this sentiment, does this affection seem logical to you?”
Jae shrugged. “Lon told us that Terry Rhodes had conducted a worldwide search to find a physical and mental type that would appeal to him. Lina fit the bill.”
“Really?” Andri asked. “A Terran?”
“Not jealous are you?” Jae flashed a grin that disappeared just as quickly. “She's everything he's been interested in, judging from what he's told me. And she seems nice enough. But she's just too shy at times. She's very timid and then the next moment she's taking command. She's teaching Wiley, for orb's sake! She's from Earth—Earth!—and yet she's made the adjustment to Sarastor with considerable ease. I think she must have been in these types of surroundings before. She's too polite for a Terran. Too clean. I think she's been exposed to Imperial society.”
“But she saved Lon's life,” Andri contributed. “She was dying herself and she worked until she dropped to save him.”
“How lucky she did that in Legion Headquarters, where we have the equipment to save her life,” Stoan said darkly. He drummed his fingers on his desktop.
“I want you to keep her under close observation,” he finally told Jae. “You keep a list of everything she does, anything that is even remotely suspicious. If we're going to build a case against her, we have to have a mountain of circumstantial proof. Mind controllers are kicking hard to pin down even if you have trained telepaths on the trail.”
Jae nodded. “We'll need someone to contact the Terran ParaNet to see if they have any information on her. It's impossible that she just sprang from nothing one day. She's left a record somewhere.”
Stoan checked his calendar on the edge of his screen. “I've got meetings taking up the rest of my day,” he said, “but I'll get to that first thing in the morning. As long as you people are quarantined, we have some time to play with on this. We'll put the full weight of the Legion behind the request. The ParaNet will jump when we call. Keep your guard up, Jae. Kinrol out.”
Jae deleted the privacy screen to find that Wiley and Londo were still engrossed in their experiments. He went about his ordinary official business and even played a few remote games with some other Legionnaires when he got bored, dribbling the tiniest atoms of gossip about Londo and his girlfriend, the Terran witchdoctor, to their hungry ears.
At one point he felt eyes on him and turned, half-wondering if this were what mind control felt like when it started. But Lina was still asleep on her table. Instead, it was Londo catching Jae's attention. He jerked his chin toward the break room. Jae excused himself from the game and met him there behind a privacy screen. Wiley didn't even notice.
Chapter 16
Lina worked in front of her little window for another hour. Try as she might, she couldn't tune out the constant barrage of incoming calls along the wall. Jae took most of them. He didn't bother to keep his voice down, and the accusing reiteration of “Terran witchdoctor!” and “Valiant!” from both sides of the conversations made her cringe.
She wasn't just a Muttbutt; she wa
s a troglodyte, straight out of the deepest cave of, god help her, Earth, with a bone stuck in her frazzled hair. They expected her to jump around and shout, “Ooga booga!” Even Londo had made jokes about her whirling a dead chicken above her head.
Another “witchdoctor” mention caught her ear. Maybe it came from just a Legionnaire and not the outside world. But Legionnaires were not “just's”; they were big celebrities, she reminded herself, and Londo was the biggest of all.
She watched him as he bustled shirtless about the lab, helping the turtle pancake straighten up. His condition had improved so much! He lifted two experiment stations off a pile of fallen equipment as if they were two paperback books. He set them down carefully and continued his task, choosing two or three others at a time, then switching to hold up a cubicle-sized metal table as the pancake swept underneath.
How many times had she watched him on TV lifting trucks, boats, even airplanes? How many times had she watched him change the course of world events?
Once he caught her looking at him and broke into a grin. To her utmost astonishment, he juggled three stations high in the air, da-dee-da-daahing a circus ditty to go with it, until Wiley ran up to yell at him for mistreating his equipment.
Londo was Valiant.
He was world-famous, had been in every magazine ever published, every newspaper. CNN had a weekly show just about him and Maximus. E! network had squadrons of reporters solely assigned to cover him and all the Valiant groupies and wannabes. The Parahero International Information Network devoted half their broadcast day to chronicling just the activities of the Rands.
Lina was the only person in the universe Lon could have sex with. Did he love her because of that, or did he love her? She shook herself, trying to throw off the question, but it buzzed around her like a green-headed fly. It bit her when she tried to ignore it.
Sex was overwhelmingly important to Lon, and now she could do something about it for him. But if he could have had sex with someone else, and she was just someone he'd met, would he even give her a second glance?
Should she insist on a better explanation about Orenya? Was it true what Jae said? If it was, didn't that make Lon a liar? That Terry bitch had called him that, a liar. But Lina knew Lon's heart. It was steadfast. It held by hard ethics. Could a heart like that lie? To a person he loved?
Lina knew there'd come a day. He would leave to be with—who? Whoever they would be, they'd be beautiful and elegant and famous. Maybe their pictures were already in a magazine she had at home. Maybe they'd be from Out Here. Orenya.
Lina saw herself in that near future: waving goodbye so bravely, assuring Londo that she would be all right. But day after day, night after night…decade after decade she'd sit before her TV and watch him and love him, cherishing every move he made before the international cameras.
A gentle kiss on the back of her neck brought her out of her reverie with sweet surprise. “This bandage looks scratchy,” Londo said as he touched her shoulder. “Does it hurt?”
“It's probably time that that was changed,” Wiley observed. He'd been talking on screen with a smart-looking woman, maybe the president of a university. Or a country. Or a star federation. Now Dr. Mem-Bazer was forced to talk to Lina Muttbutt. “Unless you've healed yourself today?” he added.
Lina wiped some moisture from the corner of her eye before anyone could notice it. She said, “I Reiki'd last night. It's not my best technique. If my friends Sue or Dinah were here, they could work on me. I mean, if I ported in Sue's homeopathics with her.”
Wiley's fingers poised in a frozen gesture. “Full names?” he demanded more than asked.
“And so the security check begins,” Londo whispered to her as he slid into the next chair with only the faintest of winces.
She dutifully shared the information as she wondered how Sue and Dinah would be contacted by the Mega-Legion. It would probably be done subtly. Would they see through the ruse to realize they were involved in interstellar games?
Then Wiley asked her about Reiki, why she didn't know how to teach it and then why she couldn't afford to learn that level. He didn't understand classes that didn't offer scholarships to gifted students.
“Even teachers have to eat,” Lina told him. “And some do barter. Like I barter with my clients.”
Londo turned to the doctor. “All this psychic hoodoo is news to me, too. I always thought these people were charlatans. They're the subjects of jokes. I'm learning better. You should have seen him, Wiley—that storm deva the other day. It was amazing.”
“I've seen plenty since your arrival,” Wiley assured him.
Lon propped his head on his hand to gaze at Lina as he leaned against the counter. “So where do you find cheap teachers?”
Wiley took notes furiously as she detailed everything from ads in the back of New Age magazines to neon hand signs along the highway. “You have to watch out for the scam artists. A lot of them are easy to spot, but some are real pros. That's why psychic work is illegal in so many places.”
That caught Wiley's attention. “Illegal?”
Londo earnestly placed his hand over his heart. “I almost had to arrest her.” He leaned back in his chair with a smirk.
“Oh hush, Londo. It's legal in most places if you do it to practice your religion. That's why I became ordained. The law can't touch religion. Wiley, that's in the First Amendment to the American Constitution.” She counted them down on her fingers. “Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of… ah, something else.”
“Right to bear arms,” Lon said, his eyes half-closed. Maybe he was bored with her. Maybe he was just resting them. They were still pretty bloodshot.
“That's the Second Amendment,” Lina corrected.
Jae looked up from where he was working on some computer project of his own next to them. He seemed to have decided not to distance himself so much. Was he always this up-and-down, this manic? Lina recalled that she hadn't discussed Jae with Londo yet.
“Then it's all a religion?” Jae asked.
“Oh no. It's a non-religion, but according to the law if you're ordained, you're practicing a religion. Counseling clients by any appropriate means is part of a priest's legal duties.”
“Religion.” Londo made a rude noise. “Buncha cults with good publicity.”
“Maybe,” Lina hedged, “but religion can introduce people to spiritual concepts. And it's good for heritage purposes, you know, to carry on traditions and culture. That's important.”
Lon opened one eye and regarded her doubtfully.
“People need solid foundations in their lives.”
“Religion's the excuse behind too many wars,” Lon grumbled. “They're all cults that make people who don't know how to think, think whatever the religious leaders want them to.”
“A lot of religions sponsor some good charities. I seem to recall a few on the Valiant Endorsements list.”
Lon grunted into his chest at that. Then he rolled his head to look at Lina. “Jae's ordained.” Lina turned at the news.
Jae frowned at Londo for a moment before he said, “It was common to be ordained on Feith. We show our service to the universe by taking vows to help whenever asked.”
“That's what Lina's vow was.” Lon gave him a meaningful gaze.
Jae's return glance was emotionless. “There wasn't religion on Feith. Everyone was encouraged to discover how the universe spoke uniquely to them.”
Lina tried to imagine it as Jae looked past her to Londo.
“If what she said was true, it worked,” Jae said. “My people all evolved and moved beyond the physical.”
“What are you talking about?” Lon came to attention and swung around in his chair. Jae told him about the reading that morning.
“And you were the volunteer,” Londo mused. “That puts a different spin on things.”
“It does. Lina's given me something to think about. Along with whatever that was about sticking with you two.”
“What was that?�
��
Lina shook her head. “I don't get it. But it's what they said.”
Jae explained. “They told her that for me to change my attitude, I should stay around you two. If you don't mind, I think I'd like to see what they mean about that.”
“As long as you know when to back off,” Londo said pleasantly as he put his arm around Lina.
“I'm not an idiot.”
There was something about the way he said it. Since Lina had taken her nap, Jae's face had been emotionless, as if he wore a mask. It was a beautiful mask, but she didn't like it. She much preferred to see him smile or pout.
Lina was about to ask what the problem was when a tickle tapped at her brain. She tensed up immediately. Londo felt it through their link.
“What's the matter?”
“Something's wrong,” Lina said, fishing for it. “My house— Someone's there.”
“An intruder?”
Her mouth twisted as she tried to get a picture of the scene. “No, they're not going in. They're putting mail…no, a package in front of the door. They've got a, a UPS truck or something parked out on the street.”
“A delivery.”
Something was very off. “I think it's nighttime. UPS doesn't deliver at night. And I haven't ordered anything.” She fished some more. “The deva of the house, he sits on the roof and oversees things. He's very excited in a bad way about the package. Explosion? I think it has explosives in it. My cats— If they get near it—! Oh, Londo!” She clutched him in terror.
“Wiley, where can she port it to here?”
Wiley's eyes rolled counter to each other as he thought. “Porting a small bomb. How powerful?”
Lon held Lina protectively. “About a 3.2, maybe 3.5?” he guessed. “Knowing Terry Rhodes—”
Lina blinked. “Terry Rhodes?” But of course; who else?
Wiley clicked his tongue against his teeth. Was he smiling? “Put it over here.”
Lon peeled Lina out of her chair to follow Wilder to another section of the laboratory where a man-size transparent booth was embedded in the wall. Wiley nodded at it. “This will contain an explosion that size. I can seal it against contamination.” He used one of his rings to do it. “All right, port away. Let's see what you've got.”
Touch of Danger (Three Worlds) Page 44
