Hands caught my arms, dragging me back into the real world. The group of watchers around me were suddenly all watching me, their faces half slack, half ugly. I realized they’d all been listening to what I’d just heard; a bunch of goddamn voyeurs peeping through the keyhole into somebody else’s mind. Two or three of the faces I recognized from the past, Kinba himself and a couple of Oldcity’s other first citizens, all looking businesslike and respectable in drapes of watercolor silk. There was a stranger dressed the same way, but looking uneasy. The rest I didn’t recognize; but I recognized the type.
And there was someone else in the room, sitting to one side while the others stood, with a remote on his knees. Right now he was leaning forward, muttering some kind of message into it. He stopped, looking up, not at me but at Ineh again, and his eyes got glassy. He didn’t seem to fit in with the rest, and I knew the look on his face too well. He was a telepath—a corporate telepath. Some combines used them for security, though most were too paranoid to use a ‘path who was good enough to really pick brains, including their own.
And this one was communicating with Ineh, getting messages that no one else here was getting. ... I looked back at the stranger who was dressed for business, and suddenly it all fit. The Corpses were right: Somebody was using psionics to pick brains. It was happening right here in front of me, and the victim never even knew it. Ineh must have screened every crowd at the Haven, picked out the customers whose minds were crammed full of secrets to be sold to the highest bidder. And this was how she pulled them out.
Kinba turned to the woman. “Hedo, what is this?” He waved a hand at my face. He was wearing a sapphire as big as a cockroach on his middle finger. “Why did you bring him here?”
“It’s Ineh’s freak; he got past Spoode. I thought such determination ought to be rewarded. And I thought you might like to ask him how many others know he’s here.”
I saw Ineh slump over the far arm of her chair. I tried to pull free, but Kinba’s bodyguards held me with no trouble. I felt something slip over my wrists behind my back and tighten, pinning them together. Kinba smiled at me, a tiny twitch pulling his mouth against his perfect teeth.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” I said.
The hand with the sapphire ring slapped me. I shook my head, feeling fresh blood in a warm trickle down my cheek. “Mind your tongue or I’ll have it cut out.” His voice was white and cold like his face. “If you prefer to keep it, you half-breed abomination, perhaps you’ll consider telling us who else knows you’re here?” The rest of them had stopped watching Ineh, and their faces were grim.
I kept my own eyes on her, felt my body trembling. “The Corpses know. They know about the Haven and what you’re doing with it—”
He held up his hand. I stopped. “We’ll see.” Some of the faces began to look worried; but not his. The combine man kneaded his hands together. A door was opening in the next room. Two men were shaking the slug awake, hauling him off his couch. The woman called Hedo went to Ineh, helped her to stand, leading her out after the others were gone. The corporate telepath stared at me as if he’d just noticed I was there; glanced at his boss, who frowned. He looked back at me, confused, and I tried to make him react somehow. He looked down again at the remote in his lap, his shoulders hunching. Kinba’s bodyguards led me out of the room.
We went back up in the lift, back into the main part of the house; into a room looking out on the night and the long ruddy slope of the hill. Ineh was already there. She sat gulping something from a cup, her robe soaked and stained, her movements jerky. And yet she was more beautiful, almost shining; not because of what had happened, but somehow in spite of it. I shook my head again, not understanding what I was seeing. She looked up then and saw me, froze as she saw what I looked like.
“Ineh,” the woman said, “see who came for your performance.”
Ineh still sat frozen. She didn’t answer. Her mouth quivered.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’ve come to take you back with me. The Corpses know everything. If anything happens to me or you, they know who to blame.”
“Ineh, is he telling the truth?” Kinba strolled past me to where she sat, ran his maggot fingers through her hair, massaged her neck.
I felt her touch me with her mind: a hard clumsy blow that tore the tight-woven defenses I couldn’t control apart. I tried not to resist, holding out trust, hope, reassurance, not even bothering to hide my lie. Trusting her—
“He told no one.” Her voice was flat. “He is here alone, no one knows what he’s done.”
Kinba’s hands dropped to her shoulders, patted her lightly; all the hidden tension had gone out of them. His laughter was loose and easy. I was just exactly as stupid as he’d figured I was. “You see, good people, there was nothing to worry about,” heavy on the nothing.
I looked down at the floor, twisting my hands against the hard edges of the binder.
“Ineh, I’m disappointed.” His hands squeezed her shoulders. “Is this quixotic idiot really your idea of someone who’s going to change your life?” She grimaced, but didn’t answer. “Well, here he is. You did well enough for us just now. But you seem to detest it, you resist it so. That impairs your usefulness. I always said our relationship was one of mutual need, not slavery. You could leave any time you chose. Would you like to go away with him?” She looked up, her face caught in the middle of half a dozen different emotions. “You’ve given us years of loyal service. Shall I repay you now ... let you go away with him? Of course if you do, you’ll be losing the—privileges of our partnership. Are you ready to lose all that? Or do you want to stay on, safe and protected, and ... let us get rid of him?”
I couldn’t believe that she was really listening to what he said, any more than I believed for a second that he was offering her a real choice. But she stared up at him like she was seeing God. Then she looked at me for a long minute, without letting me through into her mind. She looked out the window at the empty night, and the minute stretched into two, into eternity. My mind ached, waiting for her to choose, even while I knew it was no choice and at least one of us was going to die.
I looked after her out the windowed wall at the sky ... just in time to see the windows dissolve like a film of ice in the sun, the sun bursting in on me, my sight going red-gold-white-black before I could shut my eyes. Then all hell broke loose—shouting and curses and noises I didn’t recognize, bodies slamming into me, knocking me down. By the time I blinked my eyes clear, there was a Corporate Security cruiser hanging beyond the slagged windows and the room was filling up with Corpses.
And Ineh was on her knees beside me, pulling at my arm. Her voice was high and broken, I could barely make out what she said. “Cat, Cat…they come to arrest us, to take us away!”
I sat back, trying to get my feet under me. “Get out of here, Ineh! Now, while you can—” A Corpse had spotted us, was starting toward us through the forest of shifting bodies.
“Where, where can I go? I’m afraid—”
“Somewhere they won’t be looking! Anywhere. Go on!”
“You—?”
“I’ll be all right. Go on!”
She disappeared; I felt the soft inrush of air that followed. Neat gray legs stopped short beside me. I heard the Corpse swear, and looking up I saw Polhemas. I started to get up. He reached down and caught the front of my jacket, hauling me onto my feet.
“Where did she go?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play brain-damaged with me.” The polite official front was gone. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“Me?” I jerked at my cuffed hands. “Come on, Polhemas, you think I did this to myself? You know I didn’t have anything to do with them—’’ I bent my head at the rest of the room.