I had his number now, I thought. He was completely insane, of course, but in his tremendous guilt over his own criminality with his cult or whatever, he’d decided on reparation for that guilt. The martyr type. Save his own soul through saving others. Such men were dangerous, since they were far too fanatical to face reality, but they were useful, too. Useful in some way to these people, and perhaps a lot more useful to me.
Father Bronz looked over and saw Ti standing shyly nearby. He sighed sadly. “Oh, no,” he murmured under his bream but I caught it.
My eyebrows rose in surprise. “What’s the matter?”
He gestured at Ti. “It’s a sin, what they’re doing with her and with a lot of other fine girls. They’re coming along too quick—and their fates once they’re taken into the castles are even worse.”
I felt a nervous tingling. I didn’t like to think of that, and by common consent, the subject was never mentioned. Perhaps I didn’t want to think of her leaving, at least not while I was here. She had helped pull me out of the black pit into which my mind had sunk and had provided me with a friend, a companion, a source of information and growth. We’d already been paired longer than anyone in the village could remember anyone else being. Though I didn’t kid myself that it was more than my body and her body having stronger needs that only we two could fulfill, I still didn’t like to think of the future. But I felt compelled to ask the questions.
“What will they do to her?” I found myself asking in spite of myself.
He sighed sadly again. “First they’ll freeze her, so to speak,” Father Bronze said slowly. “A growing, intelligent mind would be a liability to them, so they’ll keep her in a state of perpetual childhood. Even worse than now. It’s only a matter of finding the right part of the brain and carefully killing what’s necessary. Most of the bodymasters are former physicians and can do it easily. Then they heighten the glandular secretions or whatever—I’m no doctor, I don’t really know—and when everything’s balanced, they’ll stick her in a harem with similarly treated girls and experiment with baby after baby trying to find the key to the power and how to transmit it. It’s almost a mania with the knights, and the bodymasters are happy to practice, to continue to experiment, in their chosen field.”
I shivered slightly. “And they’re doctors? I thought doctors saved lives and made bodies and minds whole.”
He looked at me strangely. “What an odd sort you are, Tremon! Why, of course doctors are no more free from sin and corruption than you or I. There are good ones and bad ones, and most of the highly skilled bad ones wind up here, the better to test their grotesque theories. I’ve heard it said that the Confederacy encourages them in this, even provides off world computer analysis of their work, in the hope they’ll find out what makes the Warden organism tick.”
I just shook my head, refusing to accept such a horrible thought. The Confederacy! It was crazy, insane, and perfectly logical, damn it. All other experiments had come to nothing, after all, and these were considered prison worlds. But Confederacy support or no, what Bronz was saying was bleak news indeed for poor Ti.
“How long before they—take her?” I asked, fearing the answer.
He looked carefully at her. “Well,” he replied, “she’s already had all the preliminary treatments. I’d say she would be overdue. You see, they can’t let her go too long or shell have to set an intellectual pattern for them to play with safely. In other words, she’d be too smart for them, too complicated. I suspect that you’ve accelerated their plans, if they’re aware of the attachment you two have formed, since contact with an outsider like you would widen her world.”
I started, not only because I might have speeded up this dread fate but also because Bronz had so easily noted that Ti and I had been having a relationship. “How’d you know about us?” I wanted to know.
He laughed. “A priest is many things, but an observer of human nature is one of the most important I see the way she hovers there, the way she looks at you, like some eager puppy for her master. She’s really smitten with you, whether you realize it or not What are your feelings toward her?
I thought about it. Just what were my feelings about Ti? I really wasn’t quite sure myself. By no stretch of the imagination did I consider us mates, having any obligations for one another. I’d never found that sort of arrangement comprehensible anyway. But I did feel a great fondness for her, not only physically but because she had the potential of becoming a complete human being. She was bright and curious, and she picked up new concepts much more quickly than any of the other native-born of this crazy world. I wondered vaguely whether it was possible to feel paternal and lustful at the same time. That smacked of some sort of nicest, even though we weren’t in any way related, yet it summed up my feelings as much as anything, so I told Bronz as much.
He nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. Too bad, too, because with you she might have grown to be a hell of a woman.”
I considered what he was saying. Potential, that was the word. Potential. That was what I’d found so attractive in her, in contrast to the milling pawns around. Yet it was her tragedy, too. I felt a sudden strong fury rising in me, which I couldn’t quite understand or fully control. That potential was what they were going to take from her. So great a wave of anger swept through me that I almost trembled with raw, brutal emotion, and I had trouble controlling it.
Father Bronz just sat and watched me, a serious expression on his face. Finally, as I gained some control over myself and tried to relax, to beat down the alien emotional tide, he spoke.
“For the first time,” he said softly, “I saw the real Cal Tremon there beside me; he was a frightening figure, fully as terrible as his legends. I felt it, too. Great power welling up inside, bubbling like molten rock almost to the surface. You are going to be a powerful man indeed one day, Tremon, if you learn how to channel and use that fury.”
I just sat and stared strangely at him, a sudden awareness of myself and my own potential exploding in my mind. In that instant I knew Bronz, from the standpoint of a very powerful Master, had felt a surge in my Warden abilities. Now I understood why some would rise and some would not, and how it was done. The key was emotion—raw, terrible emotion. Up until that moment I had never suffered much from emotion, a weakness I could not afford in my old work as an agent. Here, though, the enzymes and hormones and all the rest that had made Tremon such a terror had come to the fore, almost consumed me. Bronz had felt it.
It wasn’t just how much power you had, it was how much self-control went along with that power—the ability to take raw, unbridled emotion and channel it, control it, shape it with your intellect. That, possibly more than any gradations of power, was what separated the ranks on this world. That explained why Kronlon, with all his power, was such a little man and would always be. That also explained why Marek Kreegan had risen to become Lord. He had been a trained agent, at the absolute top of his profession, here, in this sort of situation.
It was growing late; most of the other pawns had already returned to their huts and were sleeping now. I was, for now, still a pawn, facing the usual long day of work. “Will you still be here tomorrow?” I asked Bronz.
He shook his head. “No, sorry. I have a long way to go and I’ve tarried too long here now. I’m due in Shemlon Keep, to the south of here. Still, it was good meeting you, and I’ve a premonition of sorts we’ll meet again. A man of your power will rise quickly on this world, if properly trained and developed.”