"And what Kendric says and enjoys is important, is it?"
Her eyes closed. "Yes. Very. They do things to me, you see, such wonderful things. If I can't please them in turn, they might stop. I couldn't stand that."
The passive singsong lilt she used to recite her doctrine gave him a chill. He folded his espersense around her.
Katerina's mind was strange; unruffled, as though she'd been popping tranquillisers. There was little mental activity, she was taking only the minimum notice of her surroundings; it was almost a hibernatory state. But there was no sign of any post-trauma withdrawal, nor any of the jagged rents of chemical-induced damage he had been expecting. Greg went deeper.
Beneath the sluggish currents of her surface thoughts there was a treasured core of memory, a glowing centre of delicious anticipation and joy. But for all its bright glory, it was a contaminant, tainting every thought.
"What wonderful things?" he asked softly.
Katerina's face became dreamy. "They love me," she said.
"How do they love you?"
"Sometimes gently. Sometimes so fiercely they make me cry. It doesn't matter which. It always ends wonderfully."
Greg felt his skin going slick with cold sweat. "How long has this been going on, Katerina?"
"Ever since I came here. Time doesn't really bother me now, I'm too happy. Adrian tried, of course, tried so hard, but it never came with him, not properly. I'm so lucky they took me away from him, I might never have known otherwise."
"When did they take you away?"
She looked out vacantly across the marina, her mind nearly losing the thread of thought. "At the party, Uncle Horace's party, Bil Yi was there, that's what Julie promised. So I went. Only they were there too. He was funny and kind, it was exciting." She turned back to look at Greg. An angel's face vandalised by tears. "He's so strong. And I'm afraid."
Kendric di Girolamo slid open the cabin-lounge door and stepped on to the aft-deck. Hermione followed a pace behind.
"Mr. Mandel," he took Greg's hand in a limp grip. "So nice of you to call. I trust Katerina has been entertaining you satisfactorily." He was wearing a navy-blue blazer with bright brass buttons and a spotted silk handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket, a dark green cravat filling the top of his open white shirt. White flannel trousers and dark blue sneakers completed the nautical image.
Hermione bestowed a gracious smile. A musky breath of orchid perfume stole around Greg, caressing, starting off that certain tingle. The weeks hadn't dimmed the memory of her beauty. Skin-deep, he warned himself, camouflage. She was dressed in a cerise off-the-shoulder gypsy top and blue knee-length skirt. He was reminded of a bird of prey waiting to pounce, mesmerically deadly.
Katerina rose from the padded bench, bare feet slapping on the wooden deck as she came to stand close beside Kendric. "I've done my routine," she said, looking up adoringly at his face. "All of it, everything you said."
Greg turned away from her desperate search for Kendric's approval. Studying the New Eastfield skyline.
Kendric gently wiped her tears with his forefinger, an act which resulted in an almost electric jolt firing through Katerina's mind. His touch was awakening her. An incredibly warped version of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.
"Well done, my dear. I shall attend you in a little while. I have to have a few words with this gentleman first."
The desolation on her face was heart-wrenching.
"Come along, darling," Hermione said. "It's just silly man's talk. We'll go and get you ready. You're all smelly after that exercise. A nice shower is just what you need." She took Katerina's hand and led her back into the cabin.
Katerina looked back at Kendric, eyes round, imploring. "Hurry."
Kendric blew her a kiss.
The door closed. Through the blackened glass Greg could just make out Katerina pulling off her mauve T-shirt. Hermione's arm slipped possessively round the girl's narrow waist, leading her deeper into the Mirriam.
"Such an exquisite young girl," Kendric said, watching Greg's face with narrowed eyes. "I have always admired your English roses. After one has broken through that cool reserve, their adventurousness knows no bounds." There was a fragment of disappointment registering in his mind at Greg's refusal to show the slightest execration.
"I'm afraid I can't stop long, Mr. di Girolamo," Greg said. "My friends would worry about what'd happened to me."
"No," Kendric said, his thoughts were steely.
"I'm sorry?"
"No. You're not staying at all, Mandel. Katerina let you on board. My mistake; you should not have been allowed within a million kilometres of the Mirriam."
"But I was wondering if you could help me."
"I enquired about you after our first encounter. I know what you are. A gland psychic. A Mindstar veteran. You were not going to ask me anything, you were going to uncover. Event Horizon's truthfinder general, sent to pry by your whore daughter mistress."
Greg held his dismay in check. "Any answers you give would be entirely voluntary. I can't read people's thoughts."
"So you claim, and other people fervently hope. It is a particular human weakness you pry on, Mandel; we want, need, to believe we are secure against you. But I have a vast repository of confidential commercial information in my brain. I choose not to believe the word of a repulsive grotesquery, a failed laboratory experiment."
Greg let the neurohormones discharge into his brain, desperately searching round with his intuition. There was guilt here, a strong scent; Kendric and Julia were tied together, hating each other, feeding off each other. With a shock he knew she was as guilty as Kendric. Both of them wilfully stimulating the other's black obsession, a perverted symbiosis.
He was jerked out of his meditative analysis by hands like a pair of vices clamping round his upper arms. The bodyguards were standing on either side of him.
"Mark, Toby, throw him off," Kendric said.
"I'm going," Greg told them. He sensed rather than saw Mark's smirk.
"Too right," the bodyguard said.
Greg contracted his espersense, neglecting the other minds arrayed around the Mirriam, focusing on Kendric alone. "Wolf," he shouted.
There was no reaction. No guilt, fright, consternation, panic. The name hadn't registered. Instead, a band of mild puzzlement tapered through Kendric's mind. It was followed by a rising tide of wry satisfaction when he realised how shaken Greg was by the negative.
Toby and Mark frogmarched him off the aft-deck and down the side of the superstructure, Kendric's laughter chasing him all the way.
He was dropped abruptly at the top of the gangplank, stumbling. Something with the force of a runaway train slammed into his backside. He tried to curl up into the trusty old paratroop landing crouch, but it didn't seem to work very well. He saw a fast, confusing snapshot sequence of yachts and water and sky at impossible angles, each black interstice punctuated by a new burst of pain that mercifully shut off almost as soon as it registered, leaving a patch of numbness. The bioware node spliced into his cortex which regulated his gland was also programmed to blank out nervous impulses above a predetermined pain level. Mindstar had included the limiter as an experiment to try and alleviate shock in combat injury cases, but the Army had never brought it into widespread use, there was too much danger of squaddies ignoring the damage they'd received and making it worse.
The unyielding concrete of the quay arrested his helter-skelter momentum with a sickeningly loud slap. His brain seemed to be floating at the centre of a closed insensate universe. There was harsh laughter from afar followed by running feet. Hands grasped him, hauling him upright.