I didn’t know I had fallen asleep until I woke up. The cabin light, which I hadn’t turned down, showed me one of the three trippers standing right next to the bed. It had been her hand on my shoulder which bad awakened me, and I blinked at. the changes in her. The heavy stage make-up was gone from her face, leaving her younger-looking and almost vulnerable. Her short hair, which had been puffed up and out, was neatly combed down around her face. Her gaudy costume and tasteless day suit were both gone, having been replaced with an adapted towel. The very large light blue towel had been slit in its center to allow it to be slipped over her head, a cord around her waist drawing it closed as if it were a sleeveless imad. The thing fell nearly to her knees, making it considerably more modest than the costume she’d worn, but the girl blushed when I looked at her, and bristled.
“That big one bays he wants you,” she told me sullenly, glaring out of angry brown eyes. “Can you understand me?”
“It’s difficult, but I am making the effort,” I told her, raising myself to a sitting position. “I take it the big one you’re referring to is Tammad.”
“You talk like me!” she said in surprise, momentarily forgetting her anger. “I thought you were one of them!”
“Not through choice, I assure you.” I grimaced. “Unlike you, I wouldn’t have come within parsecs of this vessel if I hadn’t been kidnapped. Have you learned yet how big a mistake you’ve made?”
“I still don’t really understand what’s going on,” the girl complained, allowing the confusion and hurt she’d submerged to surface. “That bunch is different from any men we’ve ever met! Oh, sure, lots of guys will try to get it on with us, but all you have to do is turn your back to freeze them. These guys don’t even ask—it’s like if they want us they’ll take us without asking! And what they did to us—do you know they made us clean them up, right after they—they—”
She swallowed, trying to make room for the words to come out, but the bright red in her cheeks kept it from happening. I caught a brief flash of replay in her mind, the vividness of it leaving no doubt as to what had happened.
“You were switched,” I finished for her, feeling a good part of her embarrassment. “It hurt more than anything ever done to you, but it was worse than simply being hurt because it was humiliating. They’re strong enough to tear you apart, but all they’ll do is punish you because you’re not in their league.”
“Sure,” she nodded, totally depressed. “We’re not in anybody’s league. But we found that out a long time ago. Come on, you’d better get up or he’ll be in here himself.”
She turned away from the bed and left the cabin, wrapped up in a private disappointment that didn’t seem to have anything to do with what had gone on earlier. I got to my feet and followed her, wondering what she could have meant, and saw her walking over to her friends, who were sitting in the common area not far from Tammad and his warriors. The other two were wearing the same sort of towel arrangement she bad on, and once she was part of the group again I could see she was the one I had thought of as the third, the one who had been somewhat unsure about spraying the men. She spoke to the other two as she sat down near them, but they didn’t answer or look up from their laps. Her mind was calm reason compared to theirs, and I could see they weren’t far from being terrified.
“Terril, come here,” the barbarian called, gesturing to me from what seemed to be his permanent place among the pillows, which had been completely cleaned up. Garth was also in the same spot he had been in earlier, so walking over and hitting down put me between them again.
“Now that you are rested from your long sleep I would have you do a thing for me,” the barbarian said, keeping his voice low. His pretty blue eyes were serious, and his broad, handsome face was concerned. “The wendaa who tended my warriors—they do not seem quite right. I would have you read them and tell me what must be done to see to them.”
He sat there watching me, truthfully concerned but also covertly pleased that he’d found a way to commit me to the first step along the path he was determined I would take. The request he had made wasn’t an idle one, therefore he had every right to expect my cooperation; the one thing he didn’t expect was the way I chose to cooperate.
Instead of interpreting what I read as I had done on Rimilia I gathered the sullen depression, the shock, the fear, the confusion and near-terror coming from the women and fed them all to Tammad, just as I’d done during the mediation on Alderan, amplifying the emotion for clearer understanding by a non-empath. The barbarian paled as the unexpected load struck him, his eyes widening as be flinched, and then his control was fighting back, pushing all unwanted thought out of his mind. I could have held the picture even against his resistance, but there was no sense in letting him know that. As soon as he resisted I let it all go, then sent a smile toward him.
“Is that what you wanted to know?” I asked very sweetly, being abrasive on purpose. I was braced for a violent response, but he was still unsteady enough from what I had done to let Garth get the first words in.
“What are you two doing?” the Kabran demanded, frowning at Tammad’s dazed expression. “And speaking of those women, what was done to them? I haven’t heard a word out of them since your men turned them loose.”
“They are frightened and unhappy,” Tammad answered in a husky voice, obviously trying to interpret what he had been made to feel. “It seems they are unused to being punished for that which they do.” Then he straightened up with a sigh and his eyes, filled with a strange expression, came back to me. “Is this what you are ever concerned with, harm?” he asked very gently. “The fears and hurts and disappointments of others? Is there no joy for you to read and share, no happiness and delight? Where is the pleasure in your own world, when all about you touch you with pain?”
The soothing, sympathetic thoughts coming from his mind were so strong that all I could do was sit there and try to swallow down the burning in my throat. He was the only one who had ever known without being told how hard it was for awakened empaths to fend off the waves of emotion coming at them. Likes and dislikes, preferences and faint aversions, these were all pale shadows next to the burning bright red and orange of overwhelming hate or lust, the black-green of gut-eating envy, the ghost-white of stark terror, the ice blue of deep fear, the bloated gold of greed. Deep love was a light velvet brown, happiness a pale pink, delight a bouncy yellow, laughter a bubbling sparkle of silver. What chance did the lighter emotions have against the stronger, what chance did an empath have of avoiding them? I faintly remembered children disappearing from the creche for the gifted where I had been raised. We had all been told that those children had gone elsewhere to study and live, but none of us had ever seen them again. Were they the ones who hadn’t been strong enough to shoulder the load, the ones who had been crushed in the trying? What made an empath strong enough—and what made that strength fail?
“You have the nerve to ask about her pleasure?” Garth sputtered at the barbarian after a minute of silent courage, obviously not knowing what Tammad was referring to. “How much pleasure can she have, being kidnapped and threatened, beaten and bullied? You’ve already done enough to her; why don’t you try being a man about it and let her go?”
Tammad was surprised by the sudden outburst, surprised and puzzled. He shifted his stare to Garth and considered the other man in silence for a moment, then slowly nodded his head.