Why? Despite her explanations, I had to wonder why my thoughts skittered away from demon technology and the ancients. Was it the Dzin conditioning? Or some other sort of conditioning? Genetic selection? My own lack of interest?
Cerrelle said nothing, and the only sounds were those of our steps on the stones and the whispering of the marsh grasses in the light wind. I took a deeper breath, gathering in not only the smell of distant salt but of fish, and mudflats, and the faint hint of decaying vegetation.
The leather soles of our boots scuffed the polished surface of the lane. Cerrelle's heels hit harder than mine.
We drew nearer to the long rambling building, its low mortared rock walls surmounted by glass windows and then by a gray slate roof that shimmered almost silver in the winter morning light.
'That's the medical center.'
It didn't look like one, not like the tall structures in either Mettersfel or Halz. Esolde - what sort of evaluation would she have given me? Probably a fatal one, I concluded morosely.
'Tyndel ... you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. I know it's not easy, but it isn't doing you any good, and I don't think you want to end up before an adjustment adjudicator.'
I had to agree with that as I followed the redhead into the building and down the glass-windowed corridor almost to the end, where Cerrelle knocked on a wooden door, then entered without waiting for a response.
The small room was spare, with two chairs, a wooden cabinet that was taller than I was, and something similar to a console with an iconraiser's screen, except the screen displayed an image of mountains and a river falling through a cleft.
The sandy-haired man stood from behind the console and nodded as we stepped forward.
'This is Bekunin. He's a medical specialist,' Cerrelle said to me before turning to the thin-faced doctor. 'Tyndel is the one we discussed.'
Bekunin nodded to her. Til run the tests.'
Then she was gone, and I was standing there with Bekunin.
'Apparently, you were a Dzin master. You might have what it takes to be a needle jockey.' Bekunin nodded toward a straight-backed chair. 'Sit down.'
I sat. 'Needle jockey?'
'Interstellar pilot. It was in your briefing sprays. It's a challenging and rewarding profession.'
'Thank you.' I paused. 'And if I don't want to be a needle jockey?'
'Then you'll become a cargo handler on the most distant and unpleasant stellar outpost we have.' Bekunin smiled, a cold expression, so unlike Cerrelle's smile. 'And don't make some comment about it not being fair. The way mites treat anyone different, including you, is even less fair.'
He was right about that, but I wasn't certain I didn't expect a higher standard from Rykasha, and my face certainly showed that.
'We do expect a higher standard. We expect everyone to be a contributor to society over a lifetime, and this is where we start. Without us, you'd either have starved to death in a stone cell or be dying of cellular burnout. It takes resources to deprogram those old nanotech reformulators, and we need to see what you're fitted to do. Anyway, you need a systemic audit. Please lean back in the chair. This is going to be rough. Not physically, but it's going to be disconcerting mentally.'
'Wait a moment'
Bekunin paused. 'It's physically painless, and you'll have to go through it sooner or later.'
'What am I going through?'
'It's a complete physical diagnosis.' He went over to the wooden cabinet and pulled out a gray metal canister with a spray nozzle. 'Sit still, right there.'
'What...'
'Just a trillion or so diagnostic nanites. They'll scan every cell in your body and report back. If that's positive, then we'll go for the higher function assessment.'
Matters were once again flying past and around me, but I tried to concentrate. Why was I having such trouble? Every time we got to nanites and what they could do, my thoughts skittered sideways. Cerrelle had warned me that mites ... Dorchans, whatever I was or had been ... had a tendency to react rather than to anticipate, but I was having trouble even understanding my own reactions. I wondered if I'd ever be able to anticipate.
Bekunin touched the stud on the side of the canister, and a mist swirled toward me and then vanished - inside me, although I couldn't feel anything. I just sat as he held a sheet of metallicized plastic in front of me and waited, looking at a screen. After a time, the scene on the screen vanished and a grid structure appeared.
Bekunin set aside the sheet and sat at the console, studying the information. I waited. Then he stood and went to the cabinet. 'First stage is good. Excellent. Cerrelle has good senses about these things.' He took out a smaller canister, one that was a pale green, and turned back toward me. 'This could be disorienting, but it should be temporary. You'll understand more later when you get your in-depth briefings.'
He pressed the stud on the green canister.
Another mist fogged around me, then vanished. Sparkles flared across my field of vision, growing into dazzling stars that left me as blind as I'd been in the truffler's cave.
The darkness faded into green, veils of green that marched down an unseen hill and past me. Then came a squall line of purple hail that smashed through my thoughts.
More darkness. I squinted, but the darkness remained.
A line of fire arched before me, followed by a second, and then a third ... a fourth ... until a fountain of golden red rose and fell in the blackness.
Later... later ...
Both the words and the fire fountain faded, and a series of gauzelike red veils swirled before and around me. In time, they vanished.
I blinked, trying to focus my eyes on the doctor, or evaluator, or whatever he was.
His image slowly swam into focus.
'Excellent.' He frowned. 'Almost too good. Very high sensitivity, and there were some residuals from the earlier engee probes, but you suppressed them nicely, almost instinctively. Necessary for a needle jockey... very necessary. It goes with the Dzin background.'
I blinked again. 'Engee probes? Someone mentioned engee someplace. I don't remember where. What's that, and why is this sensitivity necessary for a needle jockey—'
I broke off at the disgusted look on his face and began to rummage through my own recently acquired knowledge. I was getting to hate that look, the one that said 'Dumb mite, use your brains!'
He waited quietly while I scrambled to put it together. Interstellar transporters ... overspace ... the Web ... the pilots called needle jockeys... who threaded the narrow and constantly shifting wormholes on the upper plane... guiding their ships around the energy vortices. Nanotechnology didn't solve all problems, as Cerrelle had pointed out. Subatomic transmutation was beyond the capability of nanotech. And it still took massive energy concentrations to lift anything out of a gravity well and send it across stellar distances ... even using overspace and the Web. My knowledge was limited enough that I couldn't follow the math exactly, but my assessment was probably close enough.
I licked my lips before I finally spoke again. 'Why does having been a Dzin master improve the success of a would-be needle jockey?'
Apparently that was a fair question, because I didn't get 'the look' again.
'It has to do - we think - with your conscious and subconscious reality acceptance and assessment. Needle jockey talent runs to about ten percent of the Rykashan population and about five percent of mite baselines. The historical sample is too small to be significant - statistically speaking - but over the past half millennia between fifty and sixty percent of mites who'd had Dzin or Toze training have possessed the raw outlook talent.' Bekunin shrugged. 'That's one reason why the center in Lyncol was willing to spend the extra effort to deprogram and deactivate those old nanites in your system.'