It was daylight when I opened my eyes again; another artificial day of Oldcity street-lighting. I blinked and squinted in the band of glare that lay across my face; sat up, feeling excitement hot and sudden in my chest as I remembered. I tried to remember how long it had been since I’d felt anything but a dim, tired ache, morning after morning. I pulled on a clean smock over my jeans and went downstairs.
I’d overslept. Jule was already there, passing out hot drinks to the day’s first handful of miserable-looking psions who’d come for their ration of human contact—something I should have been doing for her. She jerked as I came up beside her, catching her by surprise. I took the drinks out of her hands, keeping a mug of bitter-root for myself. “Sorry. Why didn’t you call me?”
She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Jule, I want to take the day off.”
Her face pinched. “Cat, not today. It’s half crazy around here without Ardan. Mim and Hebrett can’t handle it without you.”
The hell they can’t. I opened my mouth to say it, changed my mind. I sighed, and shrugged. “If you need me. ...”
She smiled. The smile stopped. “Yes, I want to talk about last night. Later. ...”
I nodded and went back to work. The morning passed in a haze of going through the motions, setting up control exercises, watching them happen, listening to a new day’s complaints from the ‘paths and ‘ports and teeks who were trying to come to terms with the freak mind talents that were tearing up their lives.
And then I was alone with Jule in Siebeling’s broom-closet office, sitting on the corner of his perfectly organized desk and drinking soup. I watched Jule sipping at her own cup, sitting in his chair; watched the kinetic sculpture on his desk, afraid to let my mind focus. The sculpture was lifeless, nothing more than a tangle of metal without Siebeling here to make it dance with his mind the way he did. You could tell what sort of mood he was in by what it was doing.
“Last night ...” Jule said finally.
“Why did you leave?” The words sounded hard.
She leaned back, the chair re-formed around her. “Because it was…painful.” She bit her lip. “I felt a—”
“It was beautiful! Everyone there, everyone in the room— she made them let her into their minds and love her for it! And she—she—”
“Touched you.” Jule nodded.
“Yeah.” I looked down.
“The strength of her sending—”
“She’s Hydran.”
“Yes.” Jule’s eyes traced my profile. “Even you couldn’t resist her.”
“You couldn’t either.” I leaned forward. “But why run away from it? It ought to make you happy to see a psion in control, strong, proud.”
“She wasn’t in control; she was afraid! She was there out of fear, need, helplessness, compulsion ...” Jule’s knuckles whitened against the cup. “All that and more, inside the pretty lies. Cat, I know what you felt last night, and how much it meant to you. But inside she was screaming, she couldn’t stop it; and I couldn’t listen to it.” Her body shuddered, and soup spilled.
I lowered my own cup slowly onto the desktop. “I don’t believe it.” But Jule wouldn’t lie—wasn’t lying. I shook my head. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then if anybody ever needed our help, she does. But she appears and disappears—how can we reach her?”
“There is a way,” meaning mind to mind. She took a deep breath. “But I can’t face it, Cat. I can’t block her sending. And I’m not even sure she’d listen. There’s something else she needs more.” Her hand moved in an empty circle through the air.
“Does that mean you won’t try?” My hands tightened.
“It means that I want someone else to try. Someone she might respond to, who’s protected from what’s inside her.”
Me. I was the one she meant. There was something I might be able to do that no one else here could. . . .
There was a knock at the door. Jule called, “Come in,” and Mim came in. She looked from Jule to me and back again. Mim was a telepath, a student psi tech; she could have told Jule anything she needed to without ever opening the door. But they did it the hard way, because of me.
“What now, Mim?” Jule looked tired suddenly.
Mim rubbed her hands on her pants, frowning. “There’s a Corpse out front, who wants to speak to Whoever Runs this Freakhouse. He’s going to ask us about corporate crime and using psionics for brainwashing. He’s also scared we’ll rape his mind while he’s here.” Her mouth twitched, her blue-green eyes were as cold as the sea.
“All right: I’ll make him feel like we’re all angels.” Jule pushed her head into her hands, leaning on the desktop. “Corporate Security looking for blood, that’s all we need. Damn it! Why don’t the deadheads leave us alone? . . . Cat, where are you going?” She called after me as I started for the door.
“Hunting.” I pushed past Mim and went out.
I spent the rest of the day, and as much time as I could steal of the days that followed, searching and asking around the Oldcity streets…getting nowhere. I’d known all my life how the information root system grew in Oldcity, thick and tangled; sending shoots up into the light among the shining towers of Quarro. Now I had money to back me, something I’d never had before; a key to Oldcity’s hidden doors that had always been closed to me. But still I got nowhere. Whoever controlled the Haven, and the Dreamweaver, wanted it kept a secret.
And meanwhile I went back again and again, like an addict, to drop another hundred credits at the Haven’s door and sit on clouds and needles, waiting. Until infinity would open once more and show her to me, let her reach out to me and into me, touching my need. And every night I tried to catch her eyes, complete the circuit, give her something in return—just my name, just my gratitude, Ask me, ask me for anything. But there was never an answer, never a sign that she felt anything. Her control was complete, and I was a blind man asking her to let me guide her. I wondered if she laughed at me, somewhere behind the inhuman peace of her face. If she was suffering there was no sign of it. Any suffering was mine, anger and frustration eating at me until it was all I could do not to get up from where I sat night after night and cross the space that separated us like the barrier in my mind. Always knowing that if I ever tried it she’d disappear, and I’d never see her even this way again.
There were other regulars in this place. I got to know them by sight, although none of them ever talked about why they came, or what they felt, sharing the forbidden fruit of telepathy. Some of them were even combine or Transport Authority officials, wearing power and arrogance like their fine upside clothes. And they were all perverts. Most of them probably swore they hated psions when they were back in the daylight; most of them probably did. Jule said they hated psions because they were afraid—and because they wanted what we had. I’d never believed her, until now. You could satisfy any hunger in Oldcity, if you had the price. If you were willing to pay enough, you could even call it entertainment. I tried to find a little pleasure in watching their faces get soft and slack from glissen and psidreams.
And one night, watching, I saw something happen I’d never seen before. At the end of the regular show, after the Dreamweaver had disappeared and the crowd was drifting toward the door, the hologram host came back through the crack in space and caught one of the guests with a word. The man nodded, lighting up like a lottery winner, and followed it into somewhere else. I started after them when I saw them disappear. But as soon as I did infinity went black ahead of me; a soft, clammy wall of nothing was suddenly between me and the place I was trying to reach. I turned back, disgusted, and went out with the rest.