by Jayne Castle
“This prism was powerful.”
Effie chuckled. “You know as well as I do that Landreth would never have approved of one of his students focusing for deceitful purposes. He would have made a fuss about it if he had discovered what was happening. But that would have been highly unlikely.”
“Because it wouldn’t be easily detected?”
“Exactly. How could anyone distinguish between a real personality characteristic and an augmented one?”
“If psychic energy was involved, a strong detector-talent could pick it up,” Amaryllis said cautiously.
“Perhaps, but again, not likely. It would take a strong one. Class-nine or class-ten detectors are extremely rare.”
“But they do exist.”
Effie tilted her head slightly to one side. “You’re convinced you encountered a prism working with a politician in an unethical manner, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“My advice is to forget about it. It would be unethical, but not illegal. Only some anal retentive type such as Professor Landreth would make a stink about it.”
Amaryllis managed not to wince, but it wasn’t easy. “Professor Landreth would have been very upset if he thought one of his prisms had violated the Code of Focus Ethics.”
Effie leaned back in her chair. “Just between you and me and ninety-nine point nine percent of the faculty, Landreth was a brilliant man, but he was a fussy old codger.”
“He had very high standards,” Amaryllis said quietly.
“His standards, as you call them, drove the rest of us nuts. Gifford Osterley left the faculty because of him, you know.”
“No, I didn’t realize that.”
“Landreth and Gifford got into a major row over changes in the curriculum.” Effie shook her head. Her beautifully cut hair swung in a perfect wave. “Gifford never stood a chance, of course. Landreth outranked him. When the smoke cleared, Gifford handed in his resignation.”
“I see.”
“It may have been for the best. Gifford has his own firm, probably making double what he used to make here. He always was ambitious.”
“The pay is definitely better in the commercial world,” Amaryllis agreed. She got to her feet. “Good-bye, Effie. It was great to see you again. Good luck with the new position.”
“Thanks.” Effie surveyed her office with satisfaction. “I can tell you one thing, things are going to be a different around here.”
“I believe you.” Amaryllis turned and walked into the outer office.
Irene looked up as she went past the desk. “Oh, Miss Lark, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“What was that?”
Irene cleared her throat discretely and lowered her voice. “Professor Landreth was always so proud of you. He used to tell me that you were the most talented prism he had ever trained.”
Amaryllis took a step closer to the desk, aware of a little twinge of warmth deep inside. “Did he really say that?”
“Yes.” Irene’s eyes abruptly glistened with unshed tears. “Everyone around here seems to be glad that he’s gone. They all talk about how things are going to change now that the old coot, as they call him, is out of the picture. But I miss him, Amaryllis.”
“Oh, Irene.” Amaryllis went behind the desk and put her arms around the older woman. “I miss him, too.”
Irene turned reverent eyes toward the portrait of Jonathan Landreth that hung on the far wall. “I went to work for him after my husband died, and I was with him for twenty-five years. He was good to me, Miss Lark. He was a little gruff on the outside, but he contributed so much to this department. And he always told me that I was invaluable to him. Invaluable. That was his exact word. He needed me, Miss Lark.”
Amaryllis hugged the older woman’s broad shoulders for a few seconds. She felt tears well in her own eyes. “I think we may be the only people who miss him.”
Irene stared at the portrait. “I’m afraid so.”
The phone call came late that afternoon. Byron had already left the office for the day, and Amaryllis was almost out the door. She glanced at the shrilly ringing instrument and debated the wisdom of answering it. It couldn’t be Lucas. She was crazy to think that he might call. He had made his opinion of her very clear last night. He wasn’t the sort of man who would be attracted to a prissy little prig.
The phone rang again. It was no doubt a business call. Amaryllis’s sense of responsibility overcame her odd reluctance to pick up the receiver. She reached for it.
“Psynergy, Inc. Amaryllis Lark speaking.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, but Amaryllis could hear someone breathing.
“Hello? You’ve reached the offices of Psynergy, Inc. Can I help you?”
“You were a friend of Landreth’s.” The words sounded muffled, as though the caller spoke through a thick cloth. It was impossible to tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman.
“Who is this?” Amaryllis asked sharply.
“If you want to learn the truth about Jonathan Landreth, talk to the woman called Vivien of the Veils.”
Amaryllis gripped the phone very tightly. “Tell me who you are.”
“She’s a syn-sex stripper. Works at a nightclub called SynCity. Ask her about Jonathan Landreth if you want to know the truth.”
“Wait. Please, tell me what this is all about.”
The line went dead. The caller had cut the connection.
Chapter
6
“Good morning, Mr. Trent. Hobart Batt from Synergistic Connections here. Just thought I’d check in to see if you were having any trouble filling out the registration forms. We had rather expected to have it back by now.”
Lucas tightened his fingers around the phone. He told himself not to lose his temper with the syn-psych counselor. It was unfortunate that Batt’s chiding tone set his teeth on edge, but it did not take much to do that this morning.
It was Monday, three whole days since the fiasco in Amaryllis’s bedroom. Lucas knew that he ought to be glad that Hobart Batt had called. It was definitely time to get moving on the task of finding a suitable wife. But for some reason it was the last subject he wanted to discuss.
“I haven’t had a chance to finish the questionnaire,” Lucas lied.
“No problem,” Hobart assured him. “A lot of clients get bogged down in the middle of the questionnaire. It’s somewhat lengthy, but that’s only because we here at Synergistic Connections pride ourselves on being thorough.”
“Yeah, sure. Thorough.” Lucas opened a drawer and slowly withdrew the thick questionnaire. He gazed at it with a sense of deep foreboding.
“A properly filled out questionnaire gives us a good basis to begin the matchmaking process,” Hobart continued briskly. “The results will, of course, be supplemented by the extensive personal interview. At that time we’ll also administer a revised MPPI.”
“MPPI?”
“The Multipsychic Paranormal Personality Inventory. The standard syn-psych test used with high-class talents such as yourself.”
“Do you use it with strong prisms, too?”
“Certainly,” Hobart said. “We’re all accustomed to thinking of prisms and talents as being quite different from each other, but technically speaking, the ability to focus a talent through a psychically generated prism is itself a talent.”
Lucas cleared his throat. “Do you ever match full-spectrum prisms and high-class talents? I mean, I know it must be a very rare occurrence, but I just wondered if it happens once in a while.”
“Almost never. Everyone knows that full spectrums are rarely compatible with very strong talents,” Hobart said.
“Because the prisms are so damn picky?”
Hobart chuckled. “Well, yes, in a sense. They prefer to think of themselves as extremely selective. But, then, so are powerful talents. Once in a great while we get a match, though. As I recall, the last one that we did at this firm was some five years ago. Why?”
“Ju
st asking.”
“How far into the questionnaire are you, Mr. Trent?”
Lucas flipped open the first page and gazed moodily at the array of questions. “I’m still on the first section.”
“Preferred physical characteristics?” Hobart made a tuttutting sound. Distinct disapproval this time. “My, we aren’t making much progress, are we?”
“We?”
Hobart coughed slightly. “Say, what if I drop by your office this morning and give you a hand.”
“Never mind, I can do this myself.”
“Exactly which question are you stuck on, Mr. Trent?” Hobart asked suspiciously.
Lucas scanned the list. “Eye color. I’m doing eye color even as we speak.”
“You haven’t gotten past eye color?”
“I had to do some thinking on the subject, but I’ve reached a conclusion. Whoever she is, she’ll have to have green eyes.” Lucas picked up a pen and circled the word green on the questionnaire.
“Green eyes? I thought you told me when you came to the office that you weren’t too particular about physical characteristics. You said you wanted to emphasize compatibility, intelligence, and temperament.”
“Call me shallow, but I’ve decided I want a woman who is compatible, intelligent, good-tempered, and who also has green eyes. Is there a problem with that, Batt? Because if so, I can always go to another agency.”
“No, no, it’s not a problem, Mr. Trent,” Hobart assured him quickly. “I just hadn’t realized that you were so particular about that sort of thing. Now, then, if you need any help with the questionnaire, please remember that, as your personal syn-psych counselor, I’m available for consultation at any time.”
“Given the size of the fee that Synergistic Connections charges, I think that goes without saying,” Lucas muttered. “You’ll have to excuse me, Batt. I’ve got an appointment.”
“Certainly, certainly. I’ll call you in a couple of days to see how you’re getting along.”
Lucas hung up the phone. The sense of doom thickened. Registering with an agency was the smart thing to do, he reminded himself. No doubt about it. Five years ago he had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, while he was very good at finding jelly-ice, he was remarkably incompetent when it came to the business of finding a life mate.
He had been searching for something besides jelly-ice for years. It was only recently that he had finally put the need into words. He was tired of being alone. He longed for what most people took for granted, a family of his own. He wanted to feel connected. He wanted to look in his children’s eyes and see the future.
He had no clear memories of his parents. He only knew that, like so many others who did not fit into the conventional routine of life in the city-states, they had ended up in the Western Islands. The frontier attracted the drifters, the loners, those with shadowed pasts, and those without family ties the way honey-syrup attracted bee-flies.
In the islands a man or a woman could start a new life with no questions asked. Lucas sometimes wondered if it was the burden of an off-the-scale talent that had driven his father to the edge of civilization. Psychic power was an inherited characteristic.
His parents had not survived long enough for Lucas to ask them why they had moved to the islands. Both Jeremy and Beth Trent had been killed in a violent windstorm when their son was three.
There had been no relatives to take Lucas in and raise him. That task had been shouldered by a dour old jelly-ice prospector named Icy Claxby.
Claxby had been as alone in the world as Lucas. In addition to teaching his young charge everything he knew about finding jelly-ice and survival in the jungle, Icy had taught him how to get by without the cushioning network of an extended family.
But the one thing that Icy Claxby had not been able to teach Lucas was how to control the unpredictable flashes of the powerful talent that had made its first appearance shortly after Lucas hit puberty. Icy, an untrained prism, had done the next best thing. He had given Lucas some important advice.
“If you ever get yourself tested, boy, you’re gonna go right off the scale,” Claxby said. “That ain’t good. It ain’t good at all.”
“Why not?” Lucas asked. He was only thirteen, and he was still having fun with the process of discovering his erratic psychic abilities. “I thought you said high-class talents are respected in the city-states. They get good jobs and stuff ’cause they’re usually smart.”
“A powerful talent gets respect, but too much talent scares folks. I’m just a medium-spectrum prism, kid, untrained to boot, but I can tell you that you’ve got more talent than those fancy lab techs will be able to measure. If they figure out that you don’t fit into their notion of what’s normal, they’ll get spooked. Word will get out, and you’ll have nothin’ but trouble.”
“I wouldn’t mind throwing a scare into Kevin Flemming,” Lucas said, thinking of the bully who was making life miserable for him and his classmates at the small school in Fort LeConner.
Icy’s alarm was immediate and plain. “Five hells, boy, you ain’t tryin’ to use your talent at school, are you? Damn it, I warned you not to ever fool around with it in front of anyone except me.”
“No, sir,” Lucas said. “I haven’t tried to use it at school.”
Icy’s expression relaxed slightly. “There’s other ways of dealin’ with a bully. Find one.”
“Yes, sir.”
Icy gripped Lucas’s shoulder with hands that bore the scars of a lifetime spent on a harsh frontier. His faded eyes glittered beneath his shaggy brows. “Listen, boy, I’m serious about this. If folks find out that you’ve got a powerful talent, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Like what?”
“People will call you a psychic vampire.”
“So?” The possibility held distinct appeal.
“So you’ll have problems gettin’ a job, for starters. Men won’t want to hire you. Others will refuse to work with you or for you. Lots of ice miners are superstitious, you know that.”
“Yes, but—”
“You won’t be able to date any decent females ’cause their parents will think you’re a freak. You been talkin’ lately about havin’ a real family of your own someday. Well, you’ll never find a wife because no matchmaking agency will register you. See what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. Being a psychic vampire was apparently not as exciting or as useful as it sounded. It could prevent him from having a family of his own. Bad synergy. “I see.”
Lucas had found another way to deal with Kevin Flemming, a method that had involved a large bucket of garbage and a pair of small, harmless twin-snakes.
Dealing with the erratic bursts of talent had proved to be much more complicated. Icy Claxby was an untrained prism. He could provide only limited guidance.
Psychic power made its own demands on a growing boy, just as all the other natural human needs and abilities did. The inborn urge to use the talent, to control it, and to understand it drove Lucas to seek solitude for extended periods of time. Icy Claxby had always been a loner himself. He didn’t ask many questions about Lucas’s absences.
With increasing frequency, Lucas took refuge in a small, hidden grotto he had discovered deep in the jungle. There, secure in the knowledge that no one could come upon him without warning, Lucas had spent endless hours teaching himself to deal with the strong spikes of psychic energy that his mind produced. The realization that he might never be able to work with a prism who could focus his full spectrum of talent had made him struggle all the harder to learn to control it himself.
He’d had some limited success, much to Icy’s surprise. Lucas taught himself enough to conceal the extent of his talent from others, including prisms and synergistic psychologists. If he concentrated, he could force his psychic energy to obey his will for a few seconds at a time without using a prism. The hard-won skill had saved his life and the lives of others on more than one occasion during the Western Islands Action.
It was in the course of cleaning out the pirates that Lucas had discovered there were other powerful talents with secrets living in the islands. The knowledge that he was not the only freak in the world had reassured him. But Rafe Stonebraker and Nick Chastain valued their privacy as much as he valued his. The three men became friends and allies, but they rarely discussed the subject of their off-the-chart talents.
Icy Claxby died the year Lucas turned eighteen. Work, study, and the search for jelly-ice had filled the void for a time, but in the end a cold, dark well of loneliness had opened up somewhere deep inside Lucas. He spent long hours in his hidden grotto, gazing into the fathomless jungle pool. His dream of having a family of his own returned to haunt him.
Eventually he had formed a partnership with Jackson Rye, and for a time the fantasy of belonging to the Rye clan had kept the old dreams at bay, but Lucas had never lost sight of his goal to have his own family.
Five years ago he had met Dora. She had been as alone in the world as he. It seemed to him that they had a lot in common.
The runaway marriage had been a disaster, just as everyone had predicted. It took Lucas less than six weeks to realize that he had been married for his money. Family law being what it was, divorce was not a possibility, so Lucas spent the next eighteen months hoping that his beautiful, sexy, vivacious wife would learn to be happy with him. There were times when he thought he was making progress.
But one day, in a low moment, he had made the mistake of telling Dora about his talent. Whatever affection she might have had for him evaporated in an instant.
“Five hells,” Dora whispered, horrified. “You’re some kind of psychic vampire.”
“It’s not like that,” Lucas said desperately. “It’s harmless.”
“You’re a freak, that’s what you are. A damned freak. You should have told me before I agreed to marry you.”
Lucas looked into her eyes and knew that he had just destroyed any hope of having the relationship he had yearned for. He should have listened to Icy Claxby.
