Noyock looked at him, startled, and then suddenly stepped back. Jazz was still listening to
Hop's mind; he heard Noyock's final, sure realization of what he had come to suspect: Jazz is a Swipe.
"Of course," Jazz answered. "Didn't I tell you so?"
Hop's boisterous confidence disappeared. He stepped back, unsure what he should do now. If Jazz could so easily read his thoughts now, that meant that Jazz could have heard every other thought he'd had before. He was embarrassed. He turned to Arran, mumbled something. What he wanted to say was, Let's get out of here.
"Arran Handully," Jazz said. "With clothes."
"And Jazz Worthing, with his mind intact," she said. "It looks as though the tables have turned back again, doesn't it?"
"I try to be a graceful winner," Jazz said. "And I see you have lost none of your grace in losing."
"It's losing that we've come to talk about," Arran said, and Jazz heard in her mind a puzzlement as to why Hop had suddenly become so reticent. Wasn't it his job to try to influence his friend? "Captain Worthing, Hop and I have found something that we don't want to lose —"
"That we don't believe we have to lose —" Hop said, fumbling for words.
"If you can help us."
"If you're willing — you see, we —" and Hop gave up the struggle for the right words, quit trying to make sure his words matched the thoughts he knew Jazz was hearing anyway. "Dammit, Jason, you know what I'm trying to say. Save me the pain."
"You two have decided you love each other,"
Jazz said, "and in a sudden burst of domesticity you want me to have your memories taped so you can remember."
"That's it," Arran said, but Hop only turned away, his face red. "Hop," she said, "what's wrong?"
"He can hear us, dammit. He can hear every word we're thinking. He's a Swipe!"
Arran half–laughed, turned to look at Jazz, saw a beatific smile on his face, and whirled back to look at Hop. "How do you know!" she demanded.
"He's been reading my thoughts since we came in here. And for a dozen wakings before — it all fits together —"
"A Swipe!" Arran said, then laughed again, nervously. "You can read my —"
"Yes," Jason answered, quietly. "When I want to. If you had known that about me, you would have known the probe wouldn't work on me. I'm used to having other people's thought patterns imposed on my own. I almost fell asleep under the probe."
Arran fumbled for the chair. Sat down. Jazz listened as she tried to drain her mind of all the thoughts she didn't want Jazz to hear.
"You know," he said, "the more you think about what you don't want me to know, the better I can hear it."
It had taken only thirty seconds, and with that comment Arran was reduced to near–hysteria. "Hop!" she cried out. "Make him stop! Make him get out of my mind!" She was crying. Hop himself was trembling, but he understood what she felt, the insecurity of having no secrets.
"Jazz, please."
"I'm not listening right now, if that's all you're worried about," Jazz said. "But you see, don't you, why I never told you I was a Swipe until this waking. It makes other people very nervous. It makes them, in fact, want to kill me."
"I don't want to kill you," Arran said, regaining some control over her voice. "I just want to get out of here."
"I'm sorry, Arran," Jazz said. "You won't be able to rejoin the others now. If they knew I was a Swipe, they'd never go under somec at all."
"We'll promise not to tell," she said, and then she turned back and faced Jazz squarely. "Oh," she said. "You've already answered us, haven't you?"
"What do you mean?" Hop asked.
"You stinking Swipe bastard!" she shouted. "Why did you tell us that!"
Hop stood up, put his arm around her. "Arran, you aren't helping anything —"
"She's right, Hop," Jazz said, maintaining his calm. "If there were any chance that Abner Doon would let any of you have a memory tape, even you, Hop, I would never have let you know I was a telepath."
"So now that we know —"
"I'm sorry. Maybe you'll fall in love again, if that's what you want."
And now it was Hop's turn to be angry. "Jazz! My friend!" he said, spitting out the words bitterly. "It's not being in love that I want. It's the last forty–eight hours that I want! It's every damned hideous thing we've gone through together! You don't have a right to take that away from me!"
"I'm sorry," Jazz said. "But I can't change it."
Hop tried to shout something else, but the words found no articulation, just a roar of fury and grief and loss as he scrambled around the table, striking at Jazz as he had struck at members of rival gangs in the deep slums of Capitol. Go for the eyes, the throat, the testicles, said his reflexes. You can't do this to me, shouted his mind. Weep, said the tears in his eyes, and Jazz overpowered him easily, had him sitting in a chair, sobbing like a child before he was sure of what was happening.
Now it was Arran's turn to offer a comforting arm, and she softly whispered to him, "Hop, all we can do is think of it as death. We're being murdered, and in our place they'll be resurrecting a new person, the person we were at the beginning of this waking. We're just going to die."
"That's comfort?" asked Noyock, unable to resist seeing the irony. Jazz chuckled softly. "You can shut up," Arran snapped.
"You came in to ask me the impossible. When I denied it you hated me."
"Listen in our minds," said Arran, "and see how much."
"I was wrong," Jason said, "to give these interviews. False hopes are worse than no hope at all. I'm sorry." He stepped to the door, opened it, said to the guards outside, who were supervising the line of colonists–to–be waiting to plead for their past. "You can all leave," he said. "No more interviews today. Sorry." The people grumbled, cried out in frustration, muttered epithets. But they got up from the chairs where they had been sitting, and left.
Jazz came back in, closed the door. "I'm sorry," he said again. He heard both Arran and Hop think, "A lot of good that does," and then think again, "What else can he do, either?"
Aloud, Arran said, "We're all trapped, then, aren't we?"
"Who is this Abner Doon, anyway?" Hop asked.
"Just a man who collects people," Jazz answered. "Hundreds were collected today. You were collected centuries ago, Hop. He found out you were brilliant. And you lived to be sixteen years old as the most prominent member of the most prominent gang in the lower corridors. You're a born survivor. So he collected you — and you've been my agent ever since."
"A puppet master," Arran said, bitterly. "And what does he do with his collection?"
"He has a vision," Jazz said. "He saw in his childhood that nothing important had happened to the human race since somec taught us to fear death and sleep through the centuries. He, and those of us who have seen his vision — we're out to wake the sleepers up. Destroy somec. Make people live out their normal threescore and ten, so that perhaps the human race can get back about its business."
"Destroy somec!" Arran scoffed. "Do you think the sleepers will ever part with it?"
"No. But we know that those who are denied it will come to the point where they will either have it, or destroy all those who do."
"Insane," said Arran.
"And for that you manipulated a thousand of the best people of Capitol, so you could throw them out into space and let them rot," Hop said.