Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  Jess nodded, but didn’t seem unduly concerned. When she thought about it, she knew why. He’d wanted to be found, to distract attention away from her. She’d made contact by luck.

  Tuzan turned to her. “I received part of a key for Neirra’s message packet. Do you have the rest of it?”

  “I do,” said Jess. “I’m her insurance.” The warning in his voice was unmistakable.

  Kerzanna took a deep breath and held onto her temper. “Jess, just give him the key. Varemba trusted him.” She tapped her brow. “The sooner he gets the farking message out of my mind, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.” She turned to Tuzan. “I’m tired of being a token in someone else’s game. I don’t like telepaths in my head, but I can’t stop you, so just do it.”

  Jess’s expression flatlined, but he nodded once. His shoulders straightened and his right eye stopped twitching. He spoke a short series of numbers and letters that sounded like location coordinates.

  Tuzan nodded once, and all of a sudden, he was in her mind. He must be a high-level telepath if he didn’t need to touch her.

  I promise I won’t go anywhere you don’t invite me.

  She pushed an ugly memory back into its closet. Just take your packet and get the hell out.

  She had a fleeting impression of hurt feelings, but she couldn’t control her rising fear. She knew it was different, that she wasn’t the terrified teenager being compelled to kneel before the short, reeking man in the alley, but just like the memory of Jess’s death, it had power over her intellect. Tuzan seemed to recognize it, and quickly said Jess’s code and another in her mind, then pushed it at the black box that had been sitting in her memory like a neutron star.

  She reeled as overwhelming sensations, emotions, facts, images, memories not her own, and phantom pain flooded into her. She somehow knew what it was like to have an articulated metal parasite on her back actively trying to kill her. She felt warm, motherly affection for a big, angry, anguished man covered in blood. A heartbreakingly beautiful brown-faced little girl with a cloud of wavy hair held up her arms and demanded a goodnight kiss. She hugged a different version of Tuzan as he cried. Her vision doubled, and she realized she was also seeing her body from Tuzan’s point of view, arching and falling back in the chair as if in seizure, and seeing Jess’s alarmed expression morph into lethal anger. Desperation shot through her.

  Tuzan! Control me or Jess will kill you!

  She felt her body relax and her eyes close, even though her brain was still trying to send panicked, garbled orders to both fight and run. She reached desperately for the quiet, anywhere-but-there place in her mind that would let her come out of this with her sanity intact.

  Sorry. The packet is big. It’s spilling over. The walls around Tuzan’s mind thinned, giving her glimpses of his struggle to keep control.

  The deluge in her mind eased, depositing smaller nuggets of data. Like the impression that Neirra’s long game had started when the Ayorinn forecast had first ignited the original Ridderth riots thirty years ago. That Neirra wasn’t just a top-level healer and a telepath, she was a twister. That she’d met Kerzanna once before.

  Whatever Tuzan was doing now was rubbing her mental fur the wrong way. It felt like mopping up, and it came to her that he wasn’t just a telepath, he was a cleaner, able to erase her memories at will. It didn’t surprise or scare her as much as it should have.

  Almost done. Another wave of apology accompanied his words.

  She distracted herself by going through her survival checklist. She felt the nauseous aftermath of an adrenaline spike. Considering how many she’d already had in the last week, she’d worry about that later. Her internal chrono said only three minutes had elapsed since he’d first entered her mind, but it felt like hours. Her face felt wet, and she realized she’d been crying. Jumpers didn’t cry, but she wasn’t one anymore, so she allowed it just this once. Tuzan released her body right as one last surge of agony rocked her.

  She heard a sound of pain and snapped her eyes open. “Jess, no!”

  Jess had Tuzan in a headlock, holding what looked like an amped wirekey to the man’s throat. “He was hurting you.”

  “No. Varemba stuck a big farkin’ thorn in my mind. He pulled it out.” She pulled herself to her feet, half surprised she didn’t topple over. For once, her mind was shakier than her body. “It was just pain.” She mustered up a challenging grin. “Jumpers eat pain for breakfast.”

  She willed him to read her face, to see that she was fine, or soon would be. He stared at her for a long moment, then let Tuzan back down to the carpeted floor and stepped back. He looked stubbornly unrepentant.

  She caught Tuzan’s eye. “Thank you.” She knew he could have fought back but refrained.

  “You’re welcome.” Tuzan took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a rush of air. He gave them both serious looks and pointed to the chairs. “Shall we sit? We have some issues to discuss.”

  She sat, and after a long moment, Jess slipped the wirekey in his pocket, then pushed his chair closer to hers and sat on the edge, his back ramrod straight. No eye twitches, it was just Jess himself, feeling protective. She knew the feeling well.

  “What issues?” Jess asked.

  Tuzan sighed and rubbed his neck. “For one, you both know too much, and you’re vulnerable.” His lips thinned in annoyance. “Neirra took enormous risks to help people, but she expected them to be willing to do the same. She’s given me—us—time bombs, ready to go off. She expected us to use them for the cause.”

  Jess’s eyes narrowed. “What cause?”

  A memory, or something like it, fell into place in her mind. “Ayorinn’s forecast,” she said.

  With those words came a whole web of associations, like a neural net coming online. “Varemba was there, in the Ridderth Riots of 3209, when the Legacy was born. The forecast itself is older.” She looked to Jess, then to Tuzan. “The CPS brought her in from far away to help deal with the conspirators, to twist them, make them think they’d been betrayed by their…”

  Another not-memory opened, of sitting in a harshly bright room on the Mabingion Space Station, and Neirra’s cool fingers caressing her face. She took a ragged breath, trying to hang onto her temper. “She twisted me. She gave me the memory of Jess’s death.”

  She reached for his hand, needing to feel the solid warmth of the still living, still breathing man beside her. He clasped her hand in both of his.

  Tuzan nodded. “Yes, under Dixon Davidro’s direct order, but she also left you the real memory, hidden away in your mind. She gave me the key.” He looked away, then back to her. “It’ll hurt, and it’ll feel weird for months until the true memory reintegrates. The twisted memory will always be there, competing with it, because she tied your emotions to the false one. The events around it will always be hazy.”

  “Personal experience?” asked Jess.

  Tuzan sighed. “The riots were…” He shuddered delicately. “It was an awful time. A killing time. The CPS’s favorite tactic is to turn minder against minder. Even under the control drugs, Neirra was a top-level multi-talent. She made them think she was impaired, that they controlled her. She used that trick and invented others to save a lot of minders, right under the noses of her handlers and the other telepaths. She saved hundreds of us—me and my sister included.”

  Kerzanna squared her shoulders. “If it means I get the truth, I’ll take the pain.” It couldn’t be worse than that memory. Nothing was.

  In her mind, Tuzan spoke what seemed like a random series of words in several languages, and her head split open. She gritted her teeth against the pressure behind her eyes, and released Jess’s hand so she couldn’t crush his poor fingers. As the worst of the pain subsided, she warily called up the memory of Jess’s death, except it wasn’t Jess, it was a bloody, battered woman she’d never seen before, frothing at the mouth with rage, who’d used telekinesis to crash a police aircar and kill its occupants. An angry police officer made her kneel and
executed her on the spot, splashing her brains against the wall. It had little of the personal emotional trauma associated with the Jess memory, but it felt as nightmarishly weird as Tuzan said, because the police uniform morphed into a CPS Minder Corps uniform and Jess’s image superimposed itself in parts, like a double exposure.

  “Okay?” asked Jess quietly. She knew he was worried, though he hid it well. She nodded, more grateful than she could say that he was there with her. She’d spent far too long without him.

  She wanted to be done with all of this and move on. “What time bombs, and how are we vulnerable?”

  Tuzan’s expression was a cross between disapproval and sympathy. “Neirra’s last message asked me to bring you a gift.” He splayed graceful fingers toward a side table to Jess’s left that had a small box she’d assumed was decoration. “She said we’re all sad, untrusting sea fish who would need proof.”

  Jess leaned over and grabbed it with one hand, then passed it to her.

  Inside was a medical instrument for measuring and monitoring neuro-response in Stage Four Pelker Thomré Vadembo Syndrome. The tester for waster’s disease.

  She lifted the innocuous little unit, glad that her hand was steadier than her thoughts. It weighed so little. The tightness in her chest proved that despite rigid vigilance, hope, her nemesis, had somehow crept into her. Hope that Neirra had given her at least a few more years to be with Jess, if he wanted her. Hope that Neirra had succeeded in creating a miracle. The test results readout would change nothing… or everything.

  Sternly telling herself to quit stalling, she pushed up her sleeve and slapped the tester on her forearm, like she’d seen other Jumpers do. It automatically wrapped around her arm. Her skin itched for a moment where microneedles pierced her skin and extended nanofilaments into her muscles and nerves. She’d have the answer in twelve minutes.

  “You’ll need all your baseline data for a meaningful comparison,” said Jess, the slight French accent of his medic persona softening his consonants.

  “I have it.” To distract herself from watching the excruciatingly slow countdown, she focused on Tuzan. “What other bombs did I deliver?”

  Tuzan looked to Jess. “She left a packet in your head, too. I don’t know how, because Kameleon brains are a convoluted, fractured nest of vipers, but I have the key.” Tuzan correctly interpreted Jess’s sudden stillness. “Yes, I know all about Kameleons, and that you were one.” He smirked a little and waved a circling hand. “I didn’t always clean offices for a living, you know.”

  Phantom memories sparked in her head but flitted away when she tried to catch them. She wondered if this was what Jess constantly felt with the overlay déjà vu fragments. No wonder he was a little fractured.

  Jess appeared calm, but his right eye twitched. “Do you know what’s in the packet?” The Nordic accent said the bomber persona was again in the pilot’s seat.

  “Yes, because Neirra liked redundancy.” Tuzan sounded irritated. “It’ll mean more to you, though.”

  Jess glanced at her, and she nodded to let him know she trusted Tuzan, who’d passed up multiple opportunities to destroy them.

  Jess’s expression flatlined. “I’m ready.”

  Tuzan sighed and crossed his arms as he spoke a nonsensical phrase. Jess’s expression didn’t change, but his hands made fists. She knew he was riding out the pain and the flood of data as she had. She wished she could help make it easier for him.

  After long seconds, Jess’s hands slowly relaxed, and he blinked a couple of times. “The CPS’s Charisma project for genetic alteration. Dixon Davidro.”

  More elusive phantom memories fluttered in her mind, but she ignored them.

  “Indeed.” Tuzan frowned. “And to think I once believed the CPS treated minders better than pet-trade experi…” His voice trailed off, his focus seeming to drift for a moment.

  Tuzan abruptly stood up and crossed his arms, shoving his hands under his armpits. “I’m told my finder friend says someone with considerably less subtlety than you has been looking for Joffalk and Kane. The reward is ten times what the journalists are offering. The same anonymous cashflow account just offered the same amount for Orowitz and Nevarr, and the newly cohabbed couple, Vasil and Edisson.”

  She and Jess stood almost simultaneously. Jess spoke first. “They’ll find the trail I left so you could find us.” The Nordic accent was back.

  Tuzan swore in a language she didn’t know. “Remember what I said about being vulnerable because you know too much?” He pointed at Jess. “You’re hard to crack, but”—he pointed to her—“you are an open book to any telepath who wants to know.”

  She frowned, not liking what she was about to say, but it had to be done. “Then clean my memory, and we’ll go.” If they could stay one step ahead–

  “I can’t,” snapped Tuzan testily. “For one, I’d have to practically blank-slate Mr. Orowitz to get all the memory fragments his overlay personalities have already squirreled away. More importantly, your memory has to be intact, because if Neirra really did discover a repeatable technique for healers to cure waster’s disease, you’re our only proof, and you have the only other copy of the instructions. No one will believe us if you aren’t whole.”

  So that’s what Neirra had meant when she’d told Kerzanna she was the message. She hated that role.

  “Us?” asked Jess.

  “Yes, us.” Tuzan blew out an exasperated breath. “You both know too much about me, now, too, which was exactly what Neirra wanted. She used you both as human couriers to force us to make a connection for our own good.” He snorted. “Or for the good of the cause, at any rate.”

  Another phrase rose to the surface of her mind, and she shook her head. Distracting flotsam and jetsam from other people’s lives was getting annoying. “Your shadow railway.” Once again, as soon as she said the words, another web of information fell into place. It was a nickname for the organization Tuzan and his sister had put together to help minders escape the CPS, and it was part of a larger effort throughout the galaxy.

  Jess’s eyes widened, and his jaw clenched slightly. Apparently, Neirra had implanted the same knowledge bomb in his mind, too. The woman’s talent was terrifying.

  Tuzan looked back and forth at them. “That’s just fabulous.” He rocked side to side, as if he wanted to pace. “Neirra was a unique talent, but she was also driven and ruthless. She’s risked a lot of lives to force me to be a good little dog and do what she wants.”

  Her new knowledge said the shadow railway helped minders—and sometimes their extended families—leave CPS Minder Corps service and disappear. She shook her head and looked to Jess. “We’ll find our own way off Mabingion. Tonight, if we can.”

  “Yes.” The fierce promise in his expression was unmistakable. She released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

  Jess proved to have been thinking more strategically than she was. “Why you?” he asked Tuzan. “Your shadow railway is a part of a bigger network than just Mabingion. She could have sent us anywhere.”

  Tuzan shrugged. “Who knows? Just my lucky day, I guess.”

  Jess’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

  Kerzanna raised an eyebrow. He was rarely so sure of himself when it came to people, or so confrontational.

  Tuzan’s lips thinned in irritation. “Because she knew I have a way to protect you.”

  Jess frowned. “What, a trusted shielder, to get us through the crowds?”

  “No, your own permanent shields.” Tuzan put his fists on his hips.

  It was Kerzanna’s turn to frown. “Some sort of tech implant?” New hardware was usually incompatible with her Jumper systems, and likely much less with whatever undocumented bioware was in Jess’s brain.

  “No, permanent minder shields.” Tuzan held up a slender finger to forestall whatever Jess was going to say. “The thing is, it’ll take a couple of days to arrange, because I’m not exposing my resources unnecessarily.”

  “
I hate to point out the obvious,” she said, “but we’re not minders.”

  Tuzan waved her words off. “You don’t have to be. That’s why I kept it secret, but she found out somehow. To people like Neirra, it’s just another tool in their arsenals. They don’t stop to think of the cost or the risks.” He looked at them consideringly, then seemed to come to a decision. “First, you have to agree to let me erase your memory of how this gets arranged and how it happens, or we’ll stop here. Second, you’ll need to go completely off grid and keep moving while we decoy the bounty hunters. I’ll put you on the shadow railway.”

  “Yes,” she said, glancing at Jess, who nodded his agreement.

  Tuzan looked pointedly at her. “We communicate via minders—telepaths—and you’ll have to be around them all the time, because I’ll need you on call.”

  She appreciated the warning. “I’ll be okay, as long as they don’t compel me.”

  “And you,” Tuzan said to Jess, “need a sifter to teach you how to handle your talent, or you’re vulnerable. I don’t know any I trust right now, but I’ll look.”

  Jess shook his head. “Sifters can’t affect the overlays.” He lifted his arm and turned his wrist to show his percomp. “If you’ll turn off the tech suppressor that’s somewhere in here, I can help with the decoy effort.”

  Tuzan blew out a noisy breath. “What part about ‘completely off grid’ did you not understand? And I meant your sifter talent, not the personalities in your head.”

  Jess’s expression flatlined. “I’m not a minder.”

  Tuzan seemed oblivious to Jess’s sudden tension. “Yes, you are, because only sifters can tolerate the Kameleon process. Kameleons are rare and valuable. Low to mid-level sifters are so common, they’re expendable. The CPS made sure to erase that from your memory the day you signed the recruiting contract, and rewrote your CPS Testing Center records to match.”